Vacuum sintered B4C bulletproof ceramic board

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Ceramic materials have many attractive properties, including high specific stiffness, high specific strength, and chemical inertness in many environments. At the same time, due to its low density, high hardness and high compressive strength relative to metal, its application in armor systems is very attractive, and it has become a kind of protective armor widely used in body armor, vehicles and aircraft.

In practical applications, armored ceramic materials usually appear in the form of composite armor. It is commonly used in armored components such as additional roofs, hatch covers, exhaust panels, turret seats, bulletproof glass, pivot frames, and the lower body of tank vehicles; also used in the manufacture of torso panels, side panels, vehicle doors and drivers Seat. Among the main battle tanks, the current German Leopard-II, the British Challenger series, Israel’s Merkava, the American Abrams (MI), EE-T1 Osorio, and the former Soviet Union’s T-72 The main battle tank is equipped with carbide ceramic composite armor on its top, bottom and all sides.

The passenger seat of the American Black Hawk helicopter uses boron carbide and Kevlar composite armor for protection. In 2016, bullet-proof ceramic armor plates were installed on both sides of the cockpit and shoulders of China Army Aviation Wuzhi 10, which can resist 12.7mm large-caliber machine gun bullets and enhance the pilot’s self-protection ability.

Ceramic armor materials should meet the requirements of “high hardness, high toughness, high strength, low cost, and low density” as much as possible. Bulletproof armor materials have begun to move toward diversified, composite, and lightweight roads, and the protection level of armored vehicles has been improved through multiple channels to deal with higher-level threats.

The special bulletproof ceramics mainly used at home and abroad at this stage are B4C, Al2O3, SiC, TiB2, AlN, Si3N4, Sialon, etc.

Transparent ceramics represented by aluminum oxynitride (AlON) and magnesium aluminum spinel (MgAl2O4) have been used in the field of armor protection, which can protect the human body and observe the enemy’s situation at any time. Because of its high strength and hardness, transparent ceramic has become a potential protective material that can replace bulletproof glass, such as face shields, missile detection windows, ground combat vehicle protection windows, aircraft windshields and landing windows, etc., mainly single crystal Alumina (sapphire), aluminum oxynitride and magnesia spinel.

Although single-phase ceramics have certain bulletproof capabilities, the common problems are low fracture toughness and high brittleness. Therefore, the strengthening and toughening of bulletproof ceramics has always been a hot research direction. Strengthening methods mainly include multi-element ceramic system composite, functionally graded ceramics, layered structure design, etc.

Such as SiC-Al2O3, SiC-Si3N4-Al2O3, SiC-Si-Al2O3 and SiC-Si3N4-Si-Al2O3 silicon carbide-based composite materials, TiB2-Ti functionally graded materials, TiB2-AlN composite materials, B4C-SiC multiple phases Ceramic material. And fiber-toughened ceramic composite materials can meet the continuous demand for lightweight structural protection materials for the rapid and safe movement of personnel and equipment in war. The fibers used to toughen ceramics mainly include glass fiber and carbon fiber.

The large-scale vacuum hot-pressing furnace equipment independently developed by Gehang Vacuum Technology can meet the high standard requirements for the production of bulletproof ceramic inserts and create military quality.

It is suitable for hot pressing sintering of silicon carbide, pressure sintering of boron carbide, vacuum sintering of bulletproof inserts, etc.