A Potential Methodology for Evaluating Ceramic Quality.

Abstract

Metal armor alloys have well-established, stand-alone, ballistic acceptance criteria to demonstrate consistent lot-to-lot performance, thus allowing metals to be qualified prior to cutting and forming into the final armor design. By contrast, ceramics do not have standalone quality assurance criteria. ARL undertook a small-scale effort to evaluate an energybased assessment methodology for bare ceramics developed by TNO in the Netherlands. Bare sintered aluminum oxide tiles and hot-pressed silicon carbide tiles were evaluated using the energy methodology. While this method may have promise, a number of issues must be overcome before this method can be adopted to determine ceramic quality.