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Beyond hardness: Ceramics and ceramic-based composites for protection

  • Materials for Crashworthiness and Defense
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Abstract

Because of their lightweight and high hardness, ceramics have been successfully used in protection technologies for over 40 years. The high hardness of a ceramic enables it to break, fragment, and deform impacting projectiles. This paper deals with a number of issues connected to the application of ceramics to ballistic protection, including ceramic hardness, inelastic deformation mechanisms, basic ballistic phenomenology and experimentation, ceramic damage due to ballistic impact, performance/failure maps based upon specific damage/failure mechanisms, and what possible future types of ceramics the suppression of these damage/failure mechanisms guide us to.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, RDRL-WMM-D, Aberdeen, MD, 21005-5069, USA

    J. C. LaSalvia, J. Campbell, J. J. Swab & J. W. McCauley

Authors
  1. J. C. LaSalvia
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  2. J. Campbell
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  3. J. J. Swab
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  4. J. W. McCauley
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Correspondence to J. C. LaSalvia.

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LaSalvia, J.C., Campbell, J., Swab, J.J. et al. Beyond hardness: Ceramics and ceramic-based composites for protection. JOM 62, 16–23 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-010-0004-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-010-0004-z

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