AR-500 Steel, amazing Stuff

I was thinking if you place a Level IV ceramic plate on top of this AR-500 plate would it stop an API .50 caliber? Lets say if you wanted to make your veichle cab armored or a small hideout shack and you used this technique would it work? Or even if you didnt have the plates you could use sand bags in front of the plate to dissipate the energy before the API round even came close to the plate?

That's pretty impressive.

Depending on the weight of that particular brand of steel, it'd be interesting to see how this would work for an armored vehicle like you said or even a plate for a human.

However, due to the weight of steel (typically ~45 lbs per sq. ft.), it'd be almost unrealistic to cover a vehicle in this, as it would likely weigh too much to be practical.

reply to post by Holodomor


More likely just the cabin area, or the most vulnerable parts like doors, rear of seats, behind the headrest etc..

I can finally have my Iron Man suit
wouldnt be able to move though but i would be protected

great video of the .50 caliber .. thats a bad ass sniper rifle

No penetration because it was mounted on chains.
Had this plate been fixed in position it may have penetrated it.
Some armored vehicles don't have armor that thick on them (1/2 -3/4") in some places.
They did say that was armor-piercing round though?
I don't care how much body armor one might be wearing, a .50 cal hit would be certain death.
In answer to your question - yes, sandbags, dirt, wood all will help slow down a round a dissipate some of the potential energy.

The kick back would of been interesting to see as far as how long it takes to regain center after each shot.. Just like in the video games interesting.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


What if it the plate was mounted between sandbags before and after; the after being to give some softness to the impact. It would be impracticable to be wearing the armor but more for like fortifications. I don't think it was armor piercing which I think would def have gone through which is why I am saying that putting a level IV ceramic plate in front of the steel do deform the AP round before striking the steel. The ceramic would be harder than the steel AP round and would defeat it. The AP rounds seem to be tungsten cored:

It is an amazing material...the AR actually stands for "ABRASION RESISTANT". I work with this stuff all the time in material handling situations...aka...coal handling facilities where you are "sliding" an extremely abrasive material from one point to another.

However...there are better materials...vastly more expensive though. For example..."Chromium Carbide" is damn near so hard, you need diamnd tipped drills to put holes in it and exotic gases to flame cut it.

Another wonder metal is a clever little gem called "Astralloy V"...it is some amazing stuff...it is an alloy manufactured by a company in Alabama I think (might be wrong...been a few years). It combines the abrasion resistance of AR plate with the impact resistance of T-1. It is extremely expensive but it's properties are utterly amazing. I always thought I would love to have a blade made out of this stuff. Look it up sometime...you might be impressed.

Not sure I would recommend sandbags behind the armor. Maybe something like low density polystyrene pellets would be more appropriate due to its light weight and ability to deform?

Impressive metal though.

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Don't worry about stopping a .50 cal. the kinetic energy is what will kill you ... ie rip your limbs off ..

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reply to post by Damrod


Wow good to know, but there is a tradeoff in Hardness and durability, the harder the material the more ceramic like and brittle it becomes and would not be able to sustain multiple hits thats why you need a superhard ceramic sacrificial plates in front of your steel.

Originally posted by R0CR13
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Don't worry about stopping a .50 cal. the kinetic energy is what will kill you ... ie rip your limbs off ..

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Only protection I can see working here would be a twin or tri barrier armor. This armor would have a electric charged magnetic gap or space between the outtershell and inner shell plates. So if that type of round hit your armor it would encounter a metallic plate infront of a magnetic barrier and that would preven kenetic damage..

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL
reply to post by Damrod

 

Wow good to know, but there is a tradeoff in Hardness and durability, the harder the material the more ceramic like and brittle it becomes and would not be able to sustain multiple hits thats why you need a superhard ceramic sacrificial plates in front of your steel.

Yep...absolutely....you obviously have some experience in material handling and abrasion scenarios. I have used alumina ceramic liners as well....extremely resistant to abrasion but has near zero resistance to impact....they work ok for "soft coal" but if there is a hard rock of say granite...it can crack and ruin a good abrasion resistant liner system.

I have worked on power plant feeding systems for years...to date...the overall best is chromium carbide overlay plate....extremely expensive and a time consuming product to produce....secondary though....Astralloy V...it is some very cool stuff....if you are into the weirdness I happen to live in daily.

Another...extremely cool substance I have used for material handling and abrasion resistance is UHMW plastics...it gets a bad wrap because it is "non recyclable"...UHMW stands for "ultra high molecular weight" it is the slickest plastic you will ever find....like snot on a brass door knob...but again...it is expensive and is un-recyclable....

I actually do love what I do....after 28 years...I guess so...I like problem solving and researching materials to solve a specific problem....nerd...nerd...nerd.

reply to post by Damrod


Hehe very cool stuff, yea materials tech is just a hobby of mine, I read about it a lot and would in the future like to experiment with these materials at some point. I will definitely check out the astralloy and UHMW plastic stuff. They sound pretty cool. The only downside to these types of materials is the price like you said of the chromium carbide plates.

reply to post by THE_PROFESSIONAL


It really depends on the application. If you are in an impact area....i.e. coal falling into an impact and slide zone...then there are several different products that will handle it...some better than others and...of course...the best of the best is an arm and a leg.

I still have my personal problem solving favorites....when price becomes secondary to solving a problem....Astralloy V is an absolute remarkable substance and I don't know why things like "Modern marvels" don't highlight advances like this...if I had a choice of having a weapon made to spec....I'd have a blade made from Astralloy V...it has crazy across the board in properties....no other metal even comes close....

But it is pricey...requires special materials to even work with it...in a sense, kinda like titanium....you either have the tools to work with it or you are in the cold. Titanium requires specific tools to work with it...and those tools and products...are...of course...extremely expensive...or anyone could do it.

I like this conversation....a rare chance for me to talk about something I actually know something about.

The Israelis came up with active armor years ago to detonate rocket fired shape charges... It is nothing more than explosive panels that cover armored vehicles and detonates a rocket propelled anti tank round outside of the vehicle preventing it from penetrating the underlying armor.... I have first hand knowledge that two layers of sand bags are adequate protection from one round of 75mm recoilless rifle fire... My ears are still ringing and I need to wear hearing aids since then but the company corpsman and myself weren't blown up or ventilated by shrapnel though a medivac helicopter had been requested for us.

reply to post by Damrod


Thanks very much for this information, I will certainly look into astralloy, seems good materials for making your emergency shelter hehe

Given the applications you mention why not design your armor so that it employs a sloping grade like say, the M1 Abrams tank has?
Bullet ---> hits plate / and has to go though additional thickness due to the angle of penetration. It may also deflect a shell completely if the velocity is low enough or that angle of attack extreme enough.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


I am so glad you have the patients to talk to this guy.

I gotta walk away from the mentality of the whole design of the OP

Good luck trying to explain what a bunch of numbers on a sheet of paper mean to people that just dont have the mental capacity to principals of ballistics applied in practical application
push the Video to 25 seconds in

ok I can do this,,,only a bunch of dopes would hang armor like a swing and call it protection. Is that how you're going to protect your self in a real world application,,,,,,NOOOOOOooooo!!!

what the ceramic does is creates a cushion to expand the projectile prior to penetration. Mass of the slug is not variable unless projectile comes apart. Impact energy is relative to the size of the projectile. The ceramic offers a medium to expand the projectile to lessen or bleed off the impact energy do to the size per mass getting bigger.
take your 4 pound feather pillow out of a cannon at 4700 feet per second shoot it at a tank
take a 4lb. depleted uranium 30mm round out of a gun at 4700 feet per second,
now which one will kill the tank?

Glaze a tank and maybe the ceramic would turn the 30mm into a pillow but I wouldnt bet my life on it
but you see the point of the ceramic and why it does what they say it will do

a solid copper or other harder than lead projectile oh say .22cal make it a 220swift would penetrate your plate I bet maybe even on your swing set you got there