TDPerk wrote:Boron or carbon nitiride, or tungsten carbide. Most of the "-ides" I've heard of being used for armoring purposes have already been mentioned in this thread.
Doubt on tungsten carbide. As never heard about its usage in armoring.
Boron carbide and boron nitride may be. But nobody refractory considers refractory properties of those.
Without NERA very big thickness would be required to withstand shaped charge jet.
Refractory only in the sense that they are hard and have higher than commonly encountered melting/softening temperatures. Not refractory in the sense of being excellent insulators.
And yes, tungsten carbide can be used in armoring--any very hard substance with a high melting point and good bulk modulus can. It's heavier than is desirable for it's strength of course.
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TDPerk wrote:Refractory only in the sense that they are hard and have higher than commonly encountered melting/softening temperatures. Not refractory in the sense of being excellent insulators.
And yes, tungsten carbide can be used in armoring--any very hard substance with a high melting point and good bulk modulus can. It's heavier than is desirable for it's strength of course.
I am afraid that penetration is much more complicated process than can not be explained with "melting/softening" model.
I heard about tungsten carbide core bullets and never heard about armor plates/pellets/balls made from that. Thanks it is very new for me.
Has that any advantage in comparison e.g. Silicon Carbide or Aluminum Oxide or Boron Carbide?
Or may you only guess because “tungsten”?
Sorry for the near necro-post, was busy and never got a chance go get back into the discussion.
The US Military M1 use's DU because of it's combined density and hardness, it's layered with various composite ceramics to breakup and dissipate the energy of the impacting round. It pays the price by being ultra heavy and thus requiring an insanely powerful jet engine to achieve high mobility. It's a tank designed for WWII scale force on force combat, basically to take and hold land from an enemy while being supported by close close air superiority (Apaches and A10s). Its nigh invulnerable to anything on the ground, the best other armor can hope for is a mobility kill where you shoot the track out and thus render the tank immobile. Of course anyone who's done any study of ground combat knows that a stuck tank is a dead tank, won't take long for enemy artillery to finish an immobile tank off. That's actually the squad level strategy for dealing with tanks, mobility kill it then call in mortars / FA / AS to finish it off.
HEAT (High Explosive Anti Tank) rounds are not the best tank killers, their just cheaper and good against a variety of targets. They tend to float in the air if your firing a target a few km away, side winds can screw with your accuracy if firing at too far a range. The better round is the Sabot, has a flatter firing trajectory, travels faster and is more accurate. It's basically a two foot spinning DU needle with lots of kinetic force behind it. It basically drills through enemy armor, anything that isn't DU itself, and transfers it's kinetic force into thermal energy once it's penetrated into the crew compartment. The result is 100% lethal for anything inside the enemy armor.
Actually interesting tidbit that I alluded to earlier. During the first Iraq invasion when our tanks went force on force vs Saddam's armor, our force used Sabot's as per training doctrine. What actually happened was rather interesting. The rounds would strike the enemy armor but there wouldn't be an explosion or other signs of a thermal event (blown hatch's / smoke / ect..). The enemy tanks would stop moving though. Upon investigation what we found was a small hole going into one side of the tank with a slightly larger hole going out the other side and a long spray of reddish dust for a few dozen meters. What was happening was the rounds had too much kinetic force, they would go straight through the enemy armor without transferring their energy into thermal. The result was a hypersonic shock-wave going through the enclosed crew compartment of a tank that sucked everything from the inside to the outside instantly. It was determined that Sabot's were ridiculously overkill for enemy armor and we started using HEAT's after that.
So long story short, don't design your armor to withstand HEAT rounds. That's a losing strategy as the enemy only needs to use a DU Sabot to defeat it. Instead design your armor to defeat the high energy DU Sabot's, which virtually requires that you utilize some form of DU plates yourself.
Of course in reference to naval fires, it's kind of a wasted weapon these days. We rarely fight LoS, everything will be OTH fires. Tomahawks killed the big gun battleships permanently. This isn't to say there isn't a need for it, offshore coastal bombardment is a horrifically effective way to start a land invasion. Those big guns will decimate coastal defense artillery, ADA and any land based force that could put up a decent fight. We don't use them often, but when we need them we will be happy to have them, they save lives.
palladin9479 wrote:HEAT (High Explosive Anti Tank) rounds are not the best tank killers, their just cheaper and good against a variety of targets.
You are wrong. In asymmetric scenario that is the main scenario for US Army namely HEAT and mines are the main threat. And HEAT rounds and missiles shot not by tanks but by man portable antitank assets.
Modern man portable antitank missiles are not cheaper than Fin Stabilized Armor Piercing Discarded Sabot tank rounds as the first's cost reaches 100 thousands USD and second's - several thousands.
I do not know anything about tank-tank duel battle occurred in two Gulf Wars. Sure that there are only amateurs fairy tales.
But know about Abrams that has been destroyed from the rear by 30mm cannon of Russian IFV BMP-2: http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/Modern/Abram ... 2.jpg.html being in ambush.
palladin9479 wrote:Its nigh invulnerable to anything on the ground, the best other armor can hope...
Abrams as well as any other modern Western alliance tank till now never met the equivalent opponent in duel scenario. If believe to Russians, their tanks have lower profile (that's true) and so lower probability of hit. But hited any tank can be killed by another. May be Russians only need not 2 km but little closer for kill M1 with high probability. Also Russian tanks have much higher rate of fire but very big probability of ammunition explosion when being penetrated.
