The role of dynamic material properties in the performance of ceramic armor

The penetration of ceramic armor by a kinetic energy penetrator is complex, involving a continual process of material damage, micro-crack nucleation, growth and coalescence, and multiaxial failure, all under conditions of high loading rate and inertial confinement. It will be shown that at sufficiently high stress, which usually requires either high loading rates or confinement (these conditions are known to prevail in the region just beneath a penetrator dwelling at the surface of all armor), plastic deformation occurs in ceramics. This deformation appears to limit the strength of most ceramics, since micro-cracks are subsequently nucleated at the sites of the deformation defects and these immediately begin to coalesce into fragments. The constraint/rate-limited flow of these fragments is the physical event that permits the penetration of ceramic armor. This paper considers the implications for modeling armor penetration of laboratory experiments involving both intact and fragmented ceramics tested under compressive loading at high strain rates and under confining pressure.