Application Overview: The U.S. military spends approximately $1.5B per year on personal armor. Modern military body armor plates consist of an advanced ceramic tile face laminated with a fiber-reinforced backing material. These plates are designed to stop .30-caliber armor piercing (AP) bullets impacting at speeds of 2850 feet per second. The design objective for the ceramic tile component is to defeat the projectile and to deflect and/or break-up the penetrator. The design objective for the backing material component is to catch the fragments resulting from the ballistic impact with the ceramic, and to provide additional stopping strength and energy displacement.

Critical Issues: Key to the performance of the ceramic tile component is hardness. The harder the ceramic, the better it performs. In traditional ceramic systems, the tradeoff in achieving higher hardness is a reduction in fracture toughness. As hardness is increased, the ceramic becomes more brittle. As a consequence of this tradeoff, in stopping the first shot from an AP round, the ceramic armor tile typically will shatter, leaving the soldier vulnerable to subsequent shots. Another consequence of this tradeoff is susceptibility to incidental fracture in everyday use. If a soldier drops or otherwise mishandles their vest, the ceramic tile could potentially crack, compromising the performance of the armor. One final issue with current armor technology is weight. To achieve ballistic design objectives, today's military body armor solutions push the limit of soldier protection versus mobility.

SDC Solution: SDCmaterials has developed a unique high strength nanomaterial additive that, when incorporated into traditional ceramic systems, delivers substantial improvements in fracture toughness without compromising hardness. Within the microstructure of an enhanced ceramic tile, SDCmaterials' novel nano-particles improve performance through dissipation of impact energy. This reduces crack propagation and leaves more intact ceramic after a ballistic strike. The benefits are substantial. Our process can typically yield a 30 to 50% increase in fracture toughness and a 0 to 5% increase in hardness. SDCmaterials nano-enhanced ceramic armor tiles can be designed to deliver enhanced multi-shot protection, weight reduction, or a combination of each.