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Military vehicles are commonly armoured to withstand the impact of shrapnel, bullets or shells, protecting the soldiers inside from enemy fire. The design and purpose of the vehicle determines the amount of armour plating carried, as the plating is often very heavy and excessive amounts of armour restrict mobility. Image File history File links This is not a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, it is an M113 Gavin. ...
Image File history File links This is not a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, it is an M113 Gavin. ...
The M113 is an armored personnel carrier family of vehicles in use with the US military and many other nations. ...
The M113, one of the most common APCs, on duty during the Vietnam War Armoured personnel carriers (APCs) are light armoured fighting vehicles for the transport of infantry. ...
An armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) is a military vehicle, equipped with protection against hostile attacks and often mounted weapons. ...
Jump to: navigation, search Shrapnel is the collective term for fragments and debris thrown out by an exploding shell or landmine. ...
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Jump to: navigation, search A shell is a projectile, which, as opposed to a bullet, is not solid but contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage includes large projectiles without a filling. ...
Design as a process can take many forms depending on the object being designed and the individual or individuals participating. ...
The most heavily armoured vehicles today are the main battle tanks, which are the spearhead of the ground forces, and are designed to withstand anti-tank missiles, kinetic energy penetrators, NBC threats and in some tanks even steep-trajectory shells. The Israeli Merkava tanks were designed in a way that each tank component function as additional back-up armour to protect the crew. Outer armor is modular and enables quick replacement of damaged armour. The US M1A1 Abrams tank is a typical modern main battle tank. ...
Anti-tank, or simply AT, refers to any method of combating military armored fighting vehicles, notably tanks. ...
A kinetic energy penetrator, long-rod penetrator, or armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) is a type of ammunition which, like a bullet, does not contain explosives, but uses kinetic energy to penetrate the target. ...
NBC is an initialism used to indicate nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. ...
Merkava (Hebrew: מרכבה[?]) is a series of main battle tanks developed and manufactured by Israel for the Israel Defense Forces. ...
Technologies
Sloping and curving armour both increase the effective thickness, as a projectile striking at an angle must cut through more armour than one impacting perpendicularly. They also increase the chance of deflecting projectiles. The sloping front armour of a tank is often called the glacis, and provides the best protection as it is assumed to be the easiest part of the tank to hit. It is also made the thickest because the tank is usually considered an inherently offensive weapon, and it has been assumed by designers since before the Second World War that a tank will be moving directly towards the enemy almost all the time; even on the defensive, a tank will be deployed in such a way as to have the glacis oriented in the direction from which the enemy is expected to attack. Sloped armour was developed as a defensive measure by the French SOMUA (Société dOutillage Mécanique et dUsinage dArtillerie) right before the outbreak of World War II. It was a technological response to the trend of fitting increasingly bigger guns on battle tanks. ...
This article is about angles in geometry. ...
For the Deep Purple album, see Purpendicular. ...
A glacis, in military engineering (see Fortification and Siege) is an artificial slope of earth in the front of works, so constructed as to keep an assailant under the fire of the defenders to the last possible moment. ...
Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...
Appliqué armour screens have sometimes been bolted on to armoured vehicles to increase protection.
Recently, many manufacturers have added a spall liner to the inside of the armour, which is designed to absorb fragmentation (spallation) released from the impact of an enemy shell, protecting soldiers and equipment inside. They tend to be made from kevlar or similar materials. Spall are flakes of a material that are broken off a larger solid body. ...
Jump to: navigation, search Kevlar, also known as Twaron and poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide, is a synthetic fibre that is five times stronger than steel, weight for weight. ...
Spaced armour Spaced armour, already used in WWI on the Schneider CA1 and St Chamond to defeat bullets, but reintroduced in the 1960s on the German Leopard 1, uses the fact that a shaped charge makes a jet of plasticised metal that dissipates after it travels a metre or two. There are hollow spaces inside the armour, increasing the length of travel from the exterior of the vehicle to the interior, in hopes of reducing the shaped charge's penetrating power; in some cases the interior surfaces of these hollow cavities are sloped, presenting angles to the anticipated path of the shaped charge's jet in order to further dissipate its power. Thus instead of having a single 30cm layer of steel armour, it is possible to have two 15 cm layers half a metre or more apart, giving far greater protection against shaped charges at no penalty in weight. The Schneider CA1 was the first French tank. ...
French St Chamond tanks: Note the short tracks and large body, which gave so much trouble crossing obstacles. ...
The Leopard is the primary post-WWII German tank design, a design that has been in use as the primary main battle tank for most European countries in various versions since the early 1960s. ...
A shaped charge is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the released energy. ...
The Whipple shield uses the principle of spaced armour to protect spacecraft from the impacts of micrometeoroids. Whipple shield used on NASAs Stardust probe The Whipple Shield, also known as a meteor deflection screen, was invented by Fred Whipple and is designed to protect spacecraft from collisions with small particles during high speed flight. ...
A Micrometeoroid (also micrometeorite, micrometeor) is a tiny meteoroid; a small particle of rock from space, usually weighing less than a gram, that poses a threat to space exploration. ...
Composite armour - Main article: Composite armour
Composite armour (including Chobham armour) was developed in the 1960s by the British and first used on the American M1 Abrams but not, as is often presumed, on the German Leopard 2. It consists of layers of steel, ceramic, and plastic honeycomb, sometimes with layers of depleted uranium added. Composite is effective against both kinetic and shaped charge munitions. Against kinetic penetrators, the brittle ceramic blunts the projectile while the softer steel layers absorb its kinetic energy. Still, it is significantly less effective against KE-munitions, so sometimes depleted uranium layers are added to provide extra protection against these warheads. Composite Armor is a type of armor consisting of layers of different material such as metals, plastics, ceramics or air. ...
Chobham armour is a composite armour developed at the British tank research centre on Chobham Common. ...
Jump to: navigation, search The 1960s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ...
The M1 Abrams main battle tank is the principal combat tank of the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps, with three main versions being deployed starting in 1980: the M1, M1A1, and M1A2. ...
The Leopard 2 is a German main battle tank developed in the early 1970s and first entering service in 1979, replacing the earlier Leopard in the MBT role in the Bundeswehr. ...
Jump to: navigation, search The old steel cable of a colliery winding tower Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon being the primary alloying material. ...
The word ceramic is derived from the Greek word ΚεÏαμεικος (the name of a suburb of Athens), and in its strictest sense refers to clay in all its forms. ...
Jump to: navigation, search Plastic is a term that covers a range of synthetic or semisynthetic polymerization products. ...
Honeycomb on a Langstroth frame A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honeybees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. ...
// Depleted uranium (DU) is uranium which contains a reduced proportion of the fissile isotope U-235 and (usually) the highly radioactive but rare isotope U-234, compared to natural uranium. ...
Kinetic energy (also called vis viva, or living force) is energy possessed by a body by virtue of its motion. ...
A shaped charge is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the released energy. ...
Munition is often defined as a synonyn for ammunition. ...
A projectile is any object sent through the air by the application of some force. ...
Jump to: navigation, search Kinetic energy is energy that a body has as a result of its speed. ...
// Depleted uranium (DU) is uranium which contains a reduced proportion of the fissile isotope U-235 and (usually) the highly radioactive but rare isotope U-234, compared to natural uranium. ...
An alternate description of Chobham armour is that it combines spaced armour with composites. Supposedly the deeper interior heavy metal layer is a cast aluminium slab with rods of tungsten (encased in titanium) or depleted uranium running perpendicularly through it, intended to cause the points of high-velocity long-rod penetrator armour-piercing projectiles to deform, which sometimes causes the projectile to tip and strike the armour at an angle, presenting far greater surface area to the armour and therefore greatly increasing the resistance. Jump to: navigation, search General Name, Symbol, Number tungsten, W, 74 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 6, 6, d Appearance grayish white, lustrous Atomic mass 183. ...
General Name, Symbol, Number titanium, Ti, 22 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 4, 4, d Appearance silvery metallic Atomic mass 47. ...
// Depleted uranium (DU) is uranium which contains a reduced proportion of the fissile isotope U-235 and (usually) the highly radioactive but rare isotope U-234, compared to natural uranium. ...
Another type is perforated steel—armour with hollow perpendicular spaces serving the same function that they do in spaced armour, often filled with ceramic foam and backed by layers of Kevlar or similar material to trap and reduce fragmentation. This is the type used in the original version of the Leopard 2. Jump to: navigation, search Kevlar, also known as Twaron and poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide, is a synthetic fibre that is five times stronger than steel, weight for weight. ...
The Leopard 2 is a German main battle tank developed in the early 1970s and first entering service in 1979, replacing the earlier Leopard in the MBT role in the Bundeswehr. ...
Reactive armour - Main article: Reactive armour
Explosive reactive armour, initially developed by Israel, uses layers of high explosive sandwiched between steel plates. When a shaped-charge warhead hits, the explosive detonates and pushes the steel plates into the warhead, disrupting the charge's plasma flow. It is less effective against kinetic penetrators. Reactive armour poses a threat to friendly troops in the area of the vehicle. Reactive armor or explosive reactive armour (ERA), is a type of armour used primarily on tanks to lessen the damage from explosions caused from missile warheads, exploding shells, grenades, or dropped bombs. ...
This article is concerned solely with chemical explosives. ...
Detonation is a process of supersonic combustion that involves a shock wave and a reaction zone behind it. ...
The word plasma has a Greek root which means to be formed or molded (the word plastic shares this root). ...
Electrically charged armour A recent development in the UK is that of electrically charged armour. A vehicle is fitted with two thin shells. The outer shell of the vehicle contains an enormous electric charge, the inner shell is a ground. The shells are separate. When an incoming HEAT plasma-jet arrives, it penetrates the outer shell and in doing so forms a bridge between the outer shell and the inner shell. The enormous electric charge in the outer shell discharges through the jet and disrupts it. Trials have so far been extremely promising. Currently the developers of the Future Combat Systems series of armoured vehicles are looking at this technology. Future Combat Systems (FCS) is the core building block of the US Army’s Future Force. ...
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