Ceramic Tank Armour

Chobham armour is the informal name of a composite armour developed in the 1960s at the british tank research centre on chobham common surrey.

Ceramic tank armour.

Composite armor plates are lighter thicker and more flexible than steel plates. Ceramic armor is armor used by armored vehicles and in personal armor for its attenuative properties. Ceramic armor is armor used by armored vehicles and in personal armor to resist projectile penetration through high hardness and compressive strength. Ceramic composite armor plates are placed in body armor plate carriers and worn to protect against bullets projectiles fragmentation shrapnel and stab threats.

Other names informally given to chobham armour include burlington and dorchester. Ceramic materials for using as ballistic armor must be sufficiently rigid to fragment the bullet and reduce its speed transforming it into small fragments that should be stopped by the layer of flexible material that supports the ceramic. Heat and sabot rounds may make it through the outer layer of the armor but they won t make it all the way into the crew compartment. Ceramics are known to be some of the of the hardest materials and unlike materials such as kevlar which uses its fibers to catch the bullet ceramics break the bullet.

Ceramic armor can be used to protect vehicles as well as individual personnel and dates back to 1918. The strongest and lightest ceramic is boron carbide. The core armor is a variation on the british chobham armor an arrangement of metal plates ceramic blocks and open space. In hard armor with ceramic inserts the kinetic energy of the projectile is absorbed and dissipated in localized shattering of this ceramic tile and blunting of the bullet material during its impact on the hard ceramic.

The name has since become the common generic term for composite ceramic vehicle armour. Ceramics offer an advantage over steel in weight reduction and over all metals in impact energy absorption. Ceramic material shatters as the heat round penetrates the highly energetic fragments destroying the geometry of the metal jet generated by the hollow shaped charge greatly diminishing the. The most common ceramic materials used for armor applications are alumina boron carbide silicon carbide and titanium diboride.

A relatively famous form of composite armor is so called chobham armor that sandwiches a layer of ceramic between two plates of steel armor and is used on main battle tanks such as the abrams. The ceramic material can absorb a lot of heat as well as heavy physical blows.