Extended investigation of the dwell effect for an unconfined silicon carbide ceramic against tungsten-heavy-alloy rods

This paper extends a recently published investigation on the dwell capability of singleceramic tiles of limited thickness for protection against tungsten-heavy-alloy (WHA)rod penetrators. Direct impact experiments with long WHA rods against unconfinedSiC tiles supported by a steel backing were performed at impact velocities rangingfrom 1100 m/s to 1800 m/s. The ceramic tile was either bare or had a small bufferlayer attached to the front. For the bare ceramic, the area density of the penetratedmaterial r increases linearly with increasing impact velocity but at a reduced slopewhen compared to a semi-infinite RHA target. For the buffered ceramic, dwell ispossible up to around 1700 m/s. Compared to the bare ceramic r is smaller andthe buffered ceramic performs best regarding mass efficiency at an impact velocity ofabout 1600-1700 m/s before the performance drops sharply towards values in therange of the bare ceramic. Part of the work presented here has recently beenpublished in a journal article [Behner et al., Int. J. Impact Eng. 95 (2016) 54-60].