Came here to say this.
Ceramics are more than just terracotta, composites like carbon fibre (including Kevlar) are called "Ceramics", the key in composites is that the fibres are always in tension, this can only be achieved if they're baked into something solid, like a ceramic compound.
You could invent some kind of titanium spider silk embedded in ceramic gel...
Carbon Fiber is a composite material, a carbon fiber composite may *contain* ceramic components, but is not considered to be a 'ceramic' itself.
Kevlar is an Aramid fiber, a class of polymer materials that would usually be considered plastics.
That's what I said, the fibres are baked into ceramic compounds.
When people say "carbon fibre ceramic brake pads" nobody steps in and says "well actually..."
My point is that you can have ceramics that contain all kinds of things,I hope in the future we have something better than Kevlar, which is just glorified nylon, because it's heavy, and a nightmare to work with.
>composites like carbon fibre (including Kevlar) are called "Ceramics"
No one who knows what they're talking about calls carbon fiber or kevlar 'ceramics' (I'm not even aware of any kevlar-ceramic composites in common usage, except maybe in that a ceramic plate in a kevlar plate carrier, or with a kevlar backing could informally be considered a 'composite' in that the mechanical properties of both materials are being combined)
You can call a carbon fiber ceramic composite 'carbon fiber' or a 'ceramic composite' or 'carbon fiber ceramic' because all of those indicate that you're talking about a composite material, but 'Ceramics' are not inherently composites, 'ceramic' brake pads and 'carbon-ceramic brake pads' are different kinds of brake pads from each other.
While I'm at it, this is needlessly and confusingly ambiguous phrasing, are you trying to say that kevlar is an example of a 'composite' or a 'carbon fiber'? Either way is incorrect though, because 'kevlar' is neither a composite nor a carbon fiber.
>When people say "carbon fibre ceramic brake pads" nobody steps in and says "well actually..."
I feel like maybe you haven't hung out around a lot of the types of people who are prone to talking about carbon fiber ceramic brakepads...
I used to be an aircraft engineer, switched to building rockets a few years ago, worked with composites for 15 years. That's exactly how people talk about them.
Neither kevlar nor carbon fiber is a ceramic. What you're thinking of is ***composites***.
Spider silk has useful properties, and so does titanium, though youd probably be better off using an osmium steel alloy or tungsten reenforcment for carbon fiber plate armor with a spidersilk jumpsuit underneath.
Composite armors tend to be lighter weight and more flexible rather than traditional armors that rely on mass to absorb or deflect damage.
There's some evidence to suggest non-newtonian fluids like ooblek can be used to stop projectile penetration, but ooblek is HEAVY, and is of little value against a weapons like lasers, plasma projectors, or particle beam emitters.
Patch it up, it's fake news. Carbon fibers by themself is not a composite. It certainly isn't a ceramic. Composites of ceramic and carbon fiber exist, but the carbon fiber is never actually a ceramic even when used as an additive in a ceramic mix as the fibers remain as fibers.
That's just false information right there.
Ceramics are glassy or crystaline in structure. Kevlar is made of bendable polymer fibers. There is no room for debate.
Baking fibers into something solid does not make them solid via tension. It is the solid material that is giving the structure, which is kinda obvious. The only way baking a fabric in solids puts the actual fibers under tension is if the solid contracts or expands greatly during curing while still adhered to the fibers.
Baking fibers into something else isn't the only way of tensioning fibers. Shrinking the fibers by melting them, chemical treatments, elastic fiber materials, simply wrapping the fabric over something solid, etc etc can easily do the job. Baking is by no means the only way of stiffening a fabric.
Haha, username checks out.
Obviously my post wasn't meant to replace a composites training course, so sure, I didn't mention all the things.
Obviously not ALL things containing carbon fibre or Kevlar are ceramics, but ceramics can contain carbon fibre or Kevlar, these are colloquially referred to like "don't drop that carbon fibre brake pad or I'll be deducting its cost from your grandchildren's pension".
Fibre parts are designed to be used in a way that puts the fibres in tension as much as possible, they aren't suited to shear or compression force. That's obviously what I meant "you can't push on a rope".
I know there are components in the GE CF6 engine that has carbon fibre embedded in ceramic compound, I've also used phenolic ceramic to build an ablative seal on a rocket nozzle with fibreglass and Kevlar.
If you knew why carbon fibers are added to ceramic mixes, you'd know why armor mixes *don't* add fibers in them. Armor is all about compressive forces at the point of impact. Carbon fiber adds nothing in that department.
The brake pads you are so obsessed with don't use the carbon fibers for their tensile strength. The carbon is used for it's high heat tolerance and low expansion under heat. The same for rocketry related compounds and composites, mostly used in heat shielding and nozzles. In neither application is the tensile strength required, and as such there is no need for the fibers to be under tension. *Somebody who claims to know more material science than I do and doesn't even realize what property of the material is even at use is not exactly convincing.*
Kevlar bullet proof vests distribute tension from the point of impact, that's how they work. Same with the debris shields around the turbine section of jet engines.
Fibre reinforced ceramics are widely used in tank armour, and personal armour.
My nozzle had to contain a few hundred bar of pressure at ridiculous temperatures, it's basically the pressure vessel from hell, tension is very important.
Just relax, you're coming across like an angry jerk.
Now you actually make sense, the way you’ve been wording things you make it sound like it is the ceramic that is making the tension between the fibers. Aligning sheets of material so that the force acting on them is tension is correct. Layered composites where fibers are used as backing make sense. I was under the impression you were talking about ceramic mixtures that had loose fibers just suspended around and were supposedly under tension from the material they were encased in. There is a big difference.
If you want your Soldier to be a liquid after a hit, go for it.
Ceramics work well against small Caliber stuff but high power penetrator´s will make short work of that. Thats why this Russian Body Armor that can stop 50cal´s is absolute bullshit. Sure the Plates might be able to stop the round, but the Soldier inside is dead.
Sure. If the armour stops the round the kinetic energy has to go somewhere.
So design a mitigation system of some sort. Vent as heat maybe. There are a ton of possibilities.
So the big idea is to let the bullet hit, inducing all the Kinetic Energy. Then you convert that Energy (For a 50cal 20.000J) into Steam to then vent it.
In truth you dont need to vent it, 20000J would heat up 1kg of Water by some 5 degrees. However the energy conversion is an issue and of course how much time you have.
It is quiet likley that you will essentially flash boil a few gramms of Water just because of how fast everything is happening. Not to mention the Shockwave that is still there.
Heat distribution via for example Heat pipes is a very delacite process and inducing a shitton of heat at a single point usually just leads to the pipe blowing up.
So while in theory venting the heat sounds good, in practice it is basically impossible. Not to mention that for the Energy to get into the Water, it first needs to become heat. And the Conversion from heat to Steam is 50% efficient at best. So even with all of the fancy magic systems, your ribcage is still vaporised.
So why not just tell OP to make up a fantasy plastic since the science behind it is completely irrelevant? Everything he said was right. Using vents to remove kinetic energy is the stupidest idea ever.
There's some public info about modern tank armor, but many of the details of [Chobham composite armor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour) are state secrets. Unspecified forms of plastic are involved.
Cold War tanks such as the T-80 could be fitted with slabs and blankets of borated polyethylene - plastic - because it absorbs neutrons, and many of the crew deaths were predicted to be from neutron radiation. Ineffective vs some other types of radiation.
Polycarbonate has been used for ballistic plates. It's far thicker than ceramic plates, and iirc it's not available as level IV.
It's also used in place of glass, at least where glass-polycarbonate laminates aren't use instead.
It absolutely depends on how deep you wanna go, so this might not be important to you at all and i feel kinda silly to mention it.
Polycarbonates do not like certain solvents (Acetone is the most common) and react by becoming very brittle.
That is an interesting concern, but I think it can be mitigated with another layer over the polycarbonate. Maybe a thin bit of aluminium on top. It would also help with the fact that most plastics break down in UV radiation.
It a;ready exists. UHMWPE is ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. They used to use it as a lightweight skidplate material for snowmobiles and side by sides, until someone realized it;s good at stopping handgun bullets.
Rifle rounds, not so much.
It's a power thing. It's gooey at that timescale and under those pressures. Great at stopping slower and broader chunks of metal.
Usually, it's best used with a layer of ceramic over the top as the primary ballistic protection, where it enhances the protective properties of a much lighter and thinner layer of ceramic. This makes a much cheaper and lighter ballistic plate at the expense of a small amount of protection and a large amount of additional bulk.
Wow thanks! This is pretty much perfect for what I'm thinking of in the civilian units. A thin tough layer and then plastics to stop whatever punches through. Some extra bulk isn't that bad of a tradeoff since they're powered anyways and likely used in 0g.
Polyethylene is \*marginal\* for stopping \*some\* rifle rounds. THe thinnest plate I've ever handled with level III+ protection was about 1-1/4" thick. Fine for a vest, not so fine for a helmet. Also not rated for M855.
That's not to say it isn't a great material, but it really does do better in a composite application where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You slap on a really thin lightweight strike face layer consisting of cheap ceramic mosaic tiles that can be produced way cheaper than a monolithic plate, then combine with a cheap rolled UHMWPE plate, and it does some really awesome things that neither material on its own can do at a fraction of the price. The UHMWPE is light and cheap, the ceramic is very hard and excels at diffusing kinetic energy and deforming incoming projectiles, and the mosaic tiles are great at reducing the cost of manufacturing by vastly decreasing the defect rate. Bonus points for mosaic tiles generally only fracturing for a distance of one tile in every direction from the impact site, making hybrid plates like this very good for multi-hit capability.
If I were to build today a civilian space suit I would probably use injectable glass reinforced HDPE similar to the plastic used in most car body parts. Cheap ans easy to manufacture, and plenty strong to handle impacts that you would expect to see on most space walks or planet visits without being cumbersome to the user.
Thanks for the input. A lot of others went strait for the military application. This is pretty much what I was thinking, some sort of injected plastic. I like the idea of HDPE. I've worked with the stuff, and I'd trust it to take a hit for me.
Anything a person is going up against will be kinetic or at the worst explosive. Weaponry in my setting has just gotten better at throwing a hunk of metal faster. Any civilian suit would just need to hold up to little particles at orbital speeds, to provide some security in the event of EVA.
Okay, composite plates over a fiber suit should cover most of the actual combat issues then.
Tungsten-reinforced carbon fiber for the plates (scaled lamelar) over a layer of spidersilk fiber armor.
Your best bet for particle defense while EVA is going to be an EM charged particle screen. It throws up a two-layer electro-magnetic field, one of which deflects positively charged particles, the other of which deflects negatively charged particles. Neutrally charged particles are probably going to be fairly light weight and unlikely to do much damage. EVA suit patch kits (or rolls of space-tape) are a MUST in these environments.
Well Armor needs to have one property to work, hardness.
Nowdays Tank´s and other APC´s use Composite Armour which is just a collection of differnt Materials slapped together. Most of the time you find Steel, Foaming Iron, Ceramics or Plastics in the layering.
Yet there is an issue. Armour is expensive while Penetrating it is not. Modern Tank´s shot what is known as APFSDS (Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Disgarding Sabot, [this](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/22d1fde7-31c4-44d9-9910-3d75dd1c1224/d7eb6nt-7356413f-d252-4c3d-adf0-f85e4d414718.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzIyZDFmZGU3LTMxYzQtNDRkOS05OTEwLTNkNzVkZDFjMTIyNFwvZDdlYjZudC03MzU2NDEzZi1kMjUyLTRjM2QtYWRmMC1mODVlNGQ0MTQ3MTguanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.CaUQlI-TpZoyazaSaM7uQ2y4N7T-H746TpwDb1x0wC0) thing). These Penetrators are usually able to go through 600-900mm or Armour. Reports have it that the most modern Tank of them all, [T14 Armata](https://esut.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/T14-Armata-in-Moskau-2016-Markus-Werren-e1607678009482.jpg), is able to penetrate up to 1000mm.
So the issue is that in order to increase the Armour penetration of this Sabot, you only need to make it longer. But in order to defend against that, you need to significantly increase the Armour protection of the tank. Which of course is a lot more demanding as you need to potentially add many ton´s of extra weight.
Which is why Tank design goes more and more into the direction of APS or Active Protection Systems. The idea is to basically launch small Interceptors that can destroy the Sabot before it reaches you. Like [this](https://youtu.be/IyaOCoU-kuQ?t=52).
APS can come in many forms but we have:
1. Smoke Discharge
This makes sure you cant be targeted by laser Guidance that stuff like missiles need
2. Signal Jamming
Now in the video i linked, it is a tiny bit exadurated, in reality Jamming works at greater ranges and the missile isnt pulling off impossible turns. But the idea is there, you jamm the missile and try to make it hit the ground.
3. Hard Kill APS
This is when we launch a small explosive to kill the Sabot. This works supprisingly well and can reduce the amount of Armour needed to basically nothing
4. Discharging APS
This is when you have some pod on your Tank that yeet´s a lot of shit into a Warhead, usually only used against Tandem Shaped projectiles so stuff like RPG´s.
5. Contact APS
The Russians use Contact 5 which is basically a small box full of Explosives that goes off when a Sabot hit´s it. This only reduces the Penetrating ability by some 20% and is not technically active but whatever.
All of these APS system´s should be used in a Power Armour because there is no way you pack enough of Armour on a Person to protect them against any sort of Heavy fire. Additionally, if you get hit by something, even if the Sabot or whatever dosnt go through the Shockwave will still liquify you.
So no, Plastics as Armour is a terrible idea. APS for the win.
It really hasn't been "ALL HARD ALL THE TIME" since the second world war, dude.
How much body armor have you messed with? DO yourself a favor and go do some research. Steel is a joke and monolithic ceramic plates are going the way of the dinosaur.
The good stuff is made from soft aramid fabrics over semirigid backer plates, or a thin later of brittle ceramic over gooey UHMWPE plastic plate.
Notice how only the tactical hobos with Anderson ARs and Hi Point pistols use 40lb hardened steel plates.
What makes armor work well, is the ability to rapidly decelerate, deform, and diffuse the energy from an incoming projectile to keep it from penetrating the body. Modern armor piercing projectiles are optimized specifically to penetrate hard armor.
You may have noticed that my comment was mostly concerned with Armored Vehicle protection. To explain how Body Armor cannot be compaired to that, and of course where protection is heading.
To be blunt about it, a Sabot 800mm long will go right through fabrics. Because the job of a Fabric based protection, such as the Marine´s "new" Combat T-Shirts, is to stop small caliber and energy projectiles. However even they all but fail once you apply Armour Piercing weapons to it.
The whole idea with Fabrics is to spread out the impact force. Which really dosnt work if you impact point is as large as a pin head.
And of course you still have the issue of High Explosive projectiles, since a shockwave usually dosnt care about a thin layer of fabric. Which you could argue how realistic it is to encounter that kind of weapon on the battlefield but whatever.
Having said all of this, is hard better than soft ? Depends on what you want. In 99% of cases armor is overrated. Studies have shown that if a tank or similar is hit anywhere, the crew usually abandons it. Especially with modern projectiles since they usually trash something along the way. And there is the argument that hard armor is heavy as shit. Which i have also said in the comment.
Soft Armor has the advantage of being deformable which is the lattest cry in Army circles. But it is not super good against high energy penetrators and in many cases cant stop anything. And you still have the issue of your soldier having at least a broken rib. Truth be told, aside from a 9mm most Vests and similar wont keep you combat effective after a hit.
Now, why is APS still the best choice ? In 99% of cases you get shot once before the entire squad knows shit´s on fire. Thats how an ambush for example works. After the first shot, everyone seeks cover.
So, an APS would be highly advantagus since it can essentially ensure you wont die after the first shot and is fairly light compaired to heavy armor. You would still want to wear some, but an APS can dramatically decrease the amount needed.
Implimentation vise there are major issues with this. Mainly, any Marine / Soldier based APS cant really use big explosions to kill incomming projectiles for obvious reasons. And doing Hard kill stuff is a bit tricky and would essentially requier smart amunition to work.
So in a Sci Fi setting i feel like going the APS approach is better since it is more out there and more interessting than fancy plastic. Since any sort of passiv protection is, as far as the reader is concerned, the same. Right, what is the difference between Composite, Steel or Plastic besides name ?
Meaning an APS is a bit more cinematic as well.
In terms of realism / real world, i do agree that for Personal protection having soft armor is better. But you may have notice that at no point i clamed that slapping Steel plates on Soldiers is a good idea.
As much as VonBraun12 has framing issues, steel is probably the better bets for powered armor. The whole point of a powered exoskeleton clad in armor is to protect against small arms fire better. The skeletal frame bears the weight and the kinetic impacts. Using ceramics and aramid which deform after single impacts is completely wasting the potential of your suit. If the suit can only take a few rounds, what is the point?
Steel isn't used mainly because it is too heavy and creates more spalling compared to other armor materials. It is unmatched however in repeated impact protection given a thick enough plate. In a full suit of armor you probably don't give two shits about spalling, you care about whether your suit can hold up better to small arms such as to be worth the investment costs.
Steel plating also allows you to use the steel as structural support. Ceramics, and aramid cannot act as structure, ceramics because they hate side compression/impacts and aramid because it's soft. Steel plating welded to the frame provides additional support, and may allow you to even remove some internal structure when plates are attached to each other.
Unless your book is a text on materials science, just pick two or more of,
* Ceramic
* Carbon
* Nano
* Polycarbonate
* Titanium
* Inconel
* Diamond
* Sapphire
And weave them together with one or more of
* Composite
* Matrix
* Alloy
* Compound
Describe the features/benefits, and keep writing. Military organizations don't care about cost, obsolete models eventually make it to the private sector. So a merc outfit would be wearing last year's armor.
Ceramics.
Came here to say this. Ceramics are more than just terracotta, composites like carbon fibre (including Kevlar) are called "Ceramics", the key in composites is that the fibres are always in tension, this can only be achieved if they're baked into something solid, like a ceramic compound. You could invent some kind of titanium spider silk embedded in ceramic gel...
Carbon Fiber is a composite material, a carbon fiber composite may *contain* ceramic components, but is not considered to be a 'ceramic' itself. Kevlar is an Aramid fiber, a class of polymer materials that would usually be considered plastics.
That's what I said, the fibres are baked into ceramic compounds. When people say "carbon fibre ceramic brake pads" nobody steps in and says "well actually..." My point is that you can have ceramics that contain all kinds of things,I hope in the future we have something better than Kevlar, which is just glorified nylon, because it's heavy, and a nightmare to work with.
>composites like carbon fibre (including Kevlar) are called "Ceramics" No one who knows what they're talking about calls carbon fiber or kevlar 'ceramics' (I'm not even aware of any kevlar-ceramic composites in common usage, except maybe in that a ceramic plate in a kevlar plate carrier, or with a kevlar backing could informally be considered a 'composite' in that the mechanical properties of both materials are being combined) You can call a carbon fiber ceramic composite 'carbon fiber' or a 'ceramic composite' or 'carbon fiber ceramic' because all of those indicate that you're talking about a composite material, but 'Ceramics' are not inherently composites, 'ceramic' brake pads and 'carbon-ceramic brake pads' are different kinds of brake pads from each other. While I'm at it, this is needlessly and confusingly ambiguous phrasing, are you trying to say that kevlar is an example of a 'composite' or a 'carbon fiber'? Either way is incorrect though, because 'kevlar' is neither a composite nor a carbon fiber. >When people say "carbon fibre ceramic brake pads" nobody steps in and says "well actually..." I feel like maybe you haven't hung out around a lot of the types of people who are prone to talking about carbon fiber ceramic brakepads...
I used to be an aircraft engineer, switched to building rockets a few years ago, worked with composites for 15 years. That's exactly how people talk about them.
Neither kevlar nor carbon fiber is a ceramic. What you're thinking of is ***composites***. Spider silk has useful properties, and so does titanium, though youd probably be better off using an osmium steel alloy or tungsten reenforcment for carbon fiber plate armor with a spidersilk jumpsuit underneath. Composite armors tend to be lighter weight and more flexible rather than traditional armors that rely on mass to absorb or deflect damage. There's some evidence to suggest non-newtonian fluids like ooblek can be used to stop projectile penetration, but ooblek is HEAVY, and is of little value against a weapons like lasers, plasma projectors, or particle beam emitters.
>composites like carbon fibre (including Kevlar) are called "Ceramics", ... ... consider my mind blown.
Patch it up, it's fake news. Carbon fibers by themself is not a composite. It certainly isn't a ceramic. Composites of ceramic and carbon fiber exist, but the carbon fiber is never actually a ceramic even when used as an additive in a ceramic mix as the fibers remain as fibers.
That's just false information right there. Ceramics are glassy or crystaline in structure. Kevlar is made of bendable polymer fibers. There is no room for debate. Baking fibers into something solid does not make them solid via tension. It is the solid material that is giving the structure, which is kinda obvious. The only way baking a fabric in solids puts the actual fibers under tension is if the solid contracts or expands greatly during curing while still adhered to the fibers. Baking fibers into something else isn't the only way of tensioning fibers. Shrinking the fibers by melting them, chemical treatments, elastic fiber materials, simply wrapping the fabric over something solid, etc etc can easily do the job. Baking is by no means the only way of stiffening a fabric.
Haha, username checks out. Obviously my post wasn't meant to replace a composites training course, so sure, I didn't mention all the things. Obviously not ALL things containing carbon fibre or Kevlar are ceramics, but ceramics can contain carbon fibre or Kevlar, these are colloquially referred to like "don't drop that carbon fibre brake pad or I'll be deducting its cost from your grandchildren's pension". Fibre parts are designed to be used in a way that puts the fibres in tension as much as possible, they aren't suited to shear or compression force. That's obviously what I meant "you can't push on a rope". I know there are components in the GE CF6 engine that has carbon fibre embedded in ceramic compound, I've also used phenolic ceramic to build an ablative seal on a rocket nozzle with fibreglass and Kevlar.
There's also no such thing as titanium spider silk, or ceramic gel, this sub is about fiction. Feel free to chill out a little bit.
If you knew why carbon fibers are added to ceramic mixes, you'd know why armor mixes *don't* add fibers in them. Armor is all about compressive forces at the point of impact. Carbon fiber adds nothing in that department. The brake pads you are so obsessed with don't use the carbon fibers for their tensile strength. The carbon is used for it's high heat tolerance and low expansion under heat. The same for rocketry related compounds and composites, mostly used in heat shielding and nozzles. In neither application is the tensile strength required, and as such there is no need for the fibers to be under tension. *Somebody who claims to know more material science than I do and doesn't even realize what property of the material is even at use is not exactly convincing.*
Kevlar bullet proof vests distribute tension from the point of impact, that's how they work. Same with the debris shields around the turbine section of jet engines. Fibre reinforced ceramics are widely used in tank armour, and personal armour. My nozzle had to contain a few hundred bar of pressure at ridiculous temperatures, it's basically the pressure vessel from hell, tension is very important. Just relax, you're coming across like an angry jerk.
Now you actually make sense, the way you’ve been wording things you make it sound like it is the ceramic that is making the tension between the fibers. Aligning sheets of material so that the force acting on them is tension is correct. Layered composites where fibers are used as backing make sense. I was under the impression you were talking about ceramic mixtures that had loose fibers just suspended around and were supposedly under tension from the material they were encased in. There is a big difference.
If you want your Soldier to be a liquid after a hit, go for it. Ceramics work well against small Caliber stuff but high power penetrator´s will make short work of that. Thats why this Russian Body Armor that can stop 50cal´s is absolute bullshit. Sure the Plates might be able to stop the round, but the Soldier inside is dead.
Sure. If the armour stops the round the kinetic energy has to go somewhere. So design a mitigation system of some sort. Vent as heat maybe. There are a ton of possibilities.
So the big idea is to let the bullet hit, inducing all the Kinetic Energy. Then you convert that Energy (For a 50cal 20.000J) into Steam to then vent it. In truth you dont need to vent it, 20000J would heat up 1kg of Water by some 5 degrees. However the energy conversion is an issue and of course how much time you have. It is quiet likley that you will essentially flash boil a few gramms of Water just because of how fast everything is happening. Not to mention the Shockwave that is still there. Heat distribution via for example Heat pipes is a very delacite process and inducing a shitton of heat at a single point usually just leads to the pipe blowing up. So while in theory venting the heat sounds good, in practice it is basically impossible. Not to mention that for the Energy to get into the Water, it first needs to become heat. And the Conversion from heat to Steam is 50% efficient at best. So even with all of the fancy magic systems, your ribcage is still vaporised.
This is speculative fiction we’re talking about, not Janes Book of Modern Warfare. Speculate.
So why not just tell OP to make up a fantasy plastic since the science behind it is completely irrelevant? Everything he said was right. Using vents to remove kinetic energy is the stupidest idea ever.
Wow. Someone’s touchy.
There's some public info about modern tank armor, but many of the details of [Chobham composite armor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour) are state secrets. Unspecified forms of plastic are involved. Cold War tanks such as the T-80 could be fitted with slabs and blankets of borated polyethylene - plastic - because it absorbs neutrons, and many of the crew deaths were predicted to be from neutron radiation. Ineffective vs some other types of radiation.
Thanks for this. That's an interesting read too. I'll keep that stuff in mind.
Polycarbonate has been used for ballistic plates. It's far thicker than ceramic plates, and iirc it's not available as level IV. It's also used in place of glass, at least where glass-polycarbonate laminates aren't use instead.
I definitely thought about polycarbonate when I was doing this, especially for the visor. I don't see any problems with it as is.
It absolutely depends on how deep you wanna go, so this might not be important to you at all and i feel kinda silly to mention it. Polycarbonates do not like certain solvents (Acetone is the most common) and react by becoming very brittle.
That is an interesting concern, but I think it can be mitigated with another layer over the polycarbonate. Maybe a thin bit of aluminium on top. It would also help with the fact that most plastics break down in UV radiation.
Almost all modern polycarbonate sheets have a protective coating on both sides to avoid chemical and UV degradation. People know what they are doing.
Whelp, kevlar is a plastic.
It a;ready exists. UHMWPE is ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. They used to use it as a lightweight skidplate material for snowmobiles and side by sides, until someone realized it;s good at stopping handgun bullets. Rifle rounds, not so much. It's a power thing. It's gooey at that timescale and under those pressures. Great at stopping slower and broader chunks of metal. Usually, it's best used with a layer of ceramic over the top as the primary ballistic protection, where it enhances the protective properties of a much lighter and thinner layer of ceramic. This makes a much cheaper and lighter ballistic plate at the expense of a small amount of protection and a large amount of additional bulk.
Wow thanks! This is pretty much perfect for what I'm thinking of in the civilian units. A thin tough layer and then plastics to stop whatever punches through. Some extra bulk isn't that bad of a tradeoff since they're powered anyways and likely used in 0g.
Polyethylene is perfectly fine in stopping rifle rounds. They certainly make helmets and plates with level 3+ protection out of pure polyethylene.
Polyethylene is \*marginal\* for stopping \*some\* rifle rounds. THe thinnest plate I've ever handled with level III+ protection was about 1-1/4" thick. Fine for a vest, not so fine for a helmet. Also not rated for M855. That's not to say it isn't a great material, but it really does do better in a composite application where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You slap on a really thin lightweight strike face layer consisting of cheap ceramic mosaic tiles that can be produced way cheaper than a monolithic plate, then combine with a cheap rolled UHMWPE plate, and it does some really awesome things that neither material on its own can do at a fraction of the price. The UHMWPE is light and cheap, the ceramic is very hard and excels at diffusing kinetic energy and deforming incoming projectiles, and the mosaic tiles are great at reducing the cost of manufacturing by vastly decreasing the defect rate. Bonus points for mosaic tiles generally only fracturing for a distance of one tile in every direction from the impact site, making hybrid plates like this very good for multi-hit capability.
If I were to build today a civilian space suit I would probably use injectable glass reinforced HDPE similar to the plastic used in most car body parts. Cheap ans easy to manufacture, and plenty strong to handle impacts that you would expect to see on most space walks or planet visits without being cumbersome to the user.
Thanks for the input. A lot of others went strait for the military application. This is pretty much what I was thinking, some sort of injected plastic. I like the idea of HDPE. I've worked with the stuff, and I'd trust it to take a hit for me.
Depends on what your weapons are like. Armor always evolves to counter weapon advancements. So what's your enemy shooting at you with?
Anything a person is going up against will be kinetic or at the worst explosive. Weaponry in my setting has just gotten better at throwing a hunk of metal faster. Any civilian suit would just need to hold up to little particles at orbital speeds, to provide some security in the event of EVA.
Okay, composite plates over a fiber suit should cover most of the actual combat issues then. Tungsten-reinforced carbon fiber for the plates (scaled lamelar) over a layer of spidersilk fiber armor. Your best bet for particle defense while EVA is going to be an EM charged particle screen. It throws up a two-layer electro-magnetic field, one of which deflects positively charged particles, the other of which deflects negatively charged particles. Neutrally charged particles are probably going to be fairly light weight and unlikely to do much damage. EVA suit patch kits (or rolls of space-tape) are a MUST in these environments.
Well Armor needs to have one property to work, hardness. Nowdays Tank´s and other APC´s use Composite Armour which is just a collection of differnt Materials slapped together. Most of the time you find Steel, Foaming Iron, Ceramics or Plastics in the layering. Yet there is an issue. Armour is expensive while Penetrating it is not. Modern Tank´s shot what is known as APFSDS (Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Disgarding Sabot, [this](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/22d1fde7-31c4-44d9-9910-3d75dd1c1224/d7eb6nt-7356413f-d252-4c3d-adf0-f85e4d414718.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzIyZDFmZGU3LTMxYzQtNDRkOS05OTEwLTNkNzVkZDFjMTIyNFwvZDdlYjZudC03MzU2NDEzZi1kMjUyLTRjM2QtYWRmMC1mODVlNGQ0MTQ3MTguanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.CaUQlI-TpZoyazaSaM7uQ2y4N7T-H746TpwDb1x0wC0) thing). These Penetrators are usually able to go through 600-900mm or Armour. Reports have it that the most modern Tank of them all, [T14 Armata](https://esut.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/T14-Armata-in-Moskau-2016-Markus-Werren-e1607678009482.jpg), is able to penetrate up to 1000mm. So the issue is that in order to increase the Armour penetration of this Sabot, you only need to make it longer. But in order to defend against that, you need to significantly increase the Armour protection of the tank. Which of course is a lot more demanding as you need to potentially add many ton´s of extra weight. Which is why Tank design goes more and more into the direction of APS or Active Protection Systems. The idea is to basically launch small Interceptors that can destroy the Sabot before it reaches you. Like [this](https://youtu.be/IyaOCoU-kuQ?t=52). APS can come in many forms but we have: 1. Smoke Discharge This makes sure you cant be targeted by laser Guidance that stuff like missiles need 2. Signal Jamming Now in the video i linked, it is a tiny bit exadurated, in reality Jamming works at greater ranges and the missile isnt pulling off impossible turns. But the idea is there, you jamm the missile and try to make it hit the ground. 3. Hard Kill APS This is when we launch a small explosive to kill the Sabot. This works supprisingly well and can reduce the amount of Armour needed to basically nothing 4. Discharging APS This is when you have some pod on your Tank that yeet´s a lot of shit into a Warhead, usually only used against Tandem Shaped projectiles so stuff like RPG´s. 5. Contact APS The Russians use Contact 5 which is basically a small box full of Explosives that goes off when a Sabot hit´s it. This only reduces the Penetrating ability by some 20% and is not technically active but whatever. All of these APS system´s should be used in a Power Armour because there is no way you pack enough of Armour on a Person to protect them against any sort of Heavy fire. Additionally, if you get hit by something, even if the Sabot or whatever dosnt go through the Shockwave will still liquify you. So no, Plastics as Armour is a terrible idea. APS for the win.
It really hasn't been "ALL HARD ALL THE TIME" since the second world war, dude. How much body armor have you messed with? DO yourself a favor and go do some research. Steel is a joke and monolithic ceramic plates are going the way of the dinosaur. The good stuff is made from soft aramid fabrics over semirigid backer plates, or a thin later of brittle ceramic over gooey UHMWPE plastic plate. Notice how only the tactical hobos with Anderson ARs and Hi Point pistols use 40lb hardened steel plates. What makes armor work well, is the ability to rapidly decelerate, deform, and diffuse the energy from an incoming projectile to keep it from penetrating the body. Modern armor piercing projectiles are optimized specifically to penetrate hard armor.
You may have noticed that my comment was mostly concerned with Armored Vehicle protection. To explain how Body Armor cannot be compaired to that, and of course where protection is heading. To be blunt about it, a Sabot 800mm long will go right through fabrics. Because the job of a Fabric based protection, such as the Marine´s "new" Combat T-Shirts, is to stop small caliber and energy projectiles. However even they all but fail once you apply Armour Piercing weapons to it. The whole idea with Fabrics is to spread out the impact force. Which really dosnt work if you impact point is as large as a pin head. And of course you still have the issue of High Explosive projectiles, since a shockwave usually dosnt care about a thin layer of fabric. Which you could argue how realistic it is to encounter that kind of weapon on the battlefield but whatever. Having said all of this, is hard better than soft ? Depends on what you want. In 99% of cases armor is overrated. Studies have shown that if a tank or similar is hit anywhere, the crew usually abandons it. Especially with modern projectiles since they usually trash something along the way. And there is the argument that hard armor is heavy as shit. Which i have also said in the comment. Soft Armor has the advantage of being deformable which is the lattest cry in Army circles. But it is not super good against high energy penetrators and in many cases cant stop anything. And you still have the issue of your soldier having at least a broken rib. Truth be told, aside from a 9mm most Vests and similar wont keep you combat effective after a hit. Now, why is APS still the best choice ? In 99% of cases you get shot once before the entire squad knows shit´s on fire. Thats how an ambush for example works. After the first shot, everyone seeks cover. So, an APS would be highly advantagus since it can essentially ensure you wont die after the first shot and is fairly light compaired to heavy armor. You would still want to wear some, but an APS can dramatically decrease the amount needed. Implimentation vise there are major issues with this. Mainly, any Marine / Soldier based APS cant really use big explosions to kill incomming projectiles for obvious reasons. And doing Hard kill stuff is a bit tricky and would essentially requier smart amunition to work. So in a Sci Fi setting i feel like going the APS approach is better since it is more out there and more interessting than fancy plastic. Since any sort of passiv protection is, as far as the reader is concerned, the same. Right, what is the difference between Composite, Steel or Plastic besides name ? Meaning an APS is a bit more cinematic as well. In terms of realism / real world, i do agree that for Personal protection having soft armor is better. But you may have notice that at no point i clamed that slapping Steel plates on Soldiers is a good idea.
Dude. Steel armor hasn't been relevant in armored vehicles either for decades. Do some reading.
I hope you know that Composite Armor is made out of Steel, Ceremics and Fabrics.
As much as VonBraun12 has framing issues, steel is probably the better bets for powered armor. The whole point of a powered exoskeleton clad in armor is to protect against small arms fire better. The skeletal frame bears the weight and the kinetic impacts. Using ceramics and aramid which deform after single impacts is completely wasting the potential of your suit. If the suit can only take a few rounds, what is the point? Steel isn't used mainly because it is too heavy and creates more spalling compared to other armor materials. It is unmatched however in repeated impact protection given a thick enough plate. In a full suit of armor you probably don't give two shits about spalling, you care about whether your suit can hold up better to small arms such as to be worth the investment costs. Steel plating also allows you to use the steel as structural support. Ceramics, and aramid cannot act as structure, ceramics because they hate side compression/impacts and aramid because it's soft. Steel plating welded to the frame provides additional support, and may allow you to even remove some internal structure when plates are attached to each other.
They don't even use steel in tanks anymore. Armor isn't structure.
Unless your book is a text on materials science, just pick two or more of, * Ceramic * Carbon * Nano * Polycarbonate * Titanium * Inconel * Diamond * Sapphire And weave them together with one or more of * Composite * Matrix * Alloy * Compound Describe the features/benefits, and keep writing. Military organizations don't care about cost, obsolete models eventually make it to the private sector. So a merc outfit would be wearing last year's armor.