Over the past several decades the Army has been interested in transparent (visible and infrared wavelengths) ceramics where lightweight ballistic protection with minimal optical distortion are needed. Transparent materials such as sapphire, AlON and MgAl2O4 are candidates for such applications. In order to better understand their performance, a full characterization of these materials is needed. As part of this characterization, a fractographic analysis was conducted to determine the failure mechanisms in these materials. An unexpected, yet critical outcome of this study was that the analysis revealed several problems when using biaxial flexure testing to determine the strength of c-plane sapphire. At fracture loads below ~2400 N, fracture of the sapphire was relatively simple and a strength-limiting flaw could be identified using conventional fractographic procedures. However at higher loads, the fracture process was significantly more complicated and no fracture origin could be identified. Several simple stress analyses show that at loads above 2400 N the specimen may be experiencing significant deflection such that linear elastic fracture mechanics is no longer applicable. In AlON and MgAl2O4 large grains limited the strength; however, these strength-limiting flaws are vastly different in each material.


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    Title :

    Fracture analysis of transparent armor ceramics


    Additional title:

    Bruchanalyse von transparenten Panzerkeramiken


    Contributors:
    Swab, J.J. (author) / Gilde, G.A. (author) / Patel, P.J. (author) / Wereszczak, A.A. (author) / McCauley, J.W. (author) / Risner, J.D. (author)


    Publication date :

    2001


    Size :

    20 Seiten, 12 Bilder, 2 Tabellen, 27 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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