Practical issues in ceramic armour design

The performance of ceramic armour is heavily dependent upon the configuration of the system. Generally, compromises must be made in factors such as single-shot performance in order to obtain the best overall system performance and to accommodate practical requirements such as multi-hit capability. This paper will discuss some of the factors involved in designing practical armour systems and will use experimental results to illustrate some design techniques and improvements that may be made. Factors to be addressed include the physics of stress propagation across an interface, acoustic impedance matching, optimisation of ceramic tile edge profile, general rules on ceramic armour design and choice of ceramic material.