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Post by gedzilla on May 1, 2020 15:08:10 GMT
Since I'm not a material engineer, not really sure what to look for when choosing an armor ? What stats do I focus on ?
I.e. I know to look at cost and density, and usually yield strength and tensile strength, but when I want an anti sandblaster armor, what do I look for ? Youngs Modulus ? Shear modulus ? Poisson Ratio ? Do i care about the specific heat ?
And if I'm making an anti laser armor, do I care more about melting point than thermal conductivity ?
Please help me.
Thank you
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Echo
Full Member
Posts: 141
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Post by Echo on May 1, 2020 17:17:57 GMT
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Post by thiccengine on Oct 19, 2021 18:28:00 GMT
I did some impact tests on a stationary drone, targeting an off-center rear-mounted radiator. I noticed a potential bug where direct center nose impacts (even with no slope) were much less effective than anywhere else on the hull -- targeting an off-center component avoids that. Each test was an average of 3 runs, after removing the "center-nose impact" bug. Armor is wrapped around an unarmored aluminum crew module -- so any penetration (or spalling) will destroy it. The projectile was a 10 g 4mm magnetic metal glass bullet at 8,000 m/s. So, very high cross-sectional density: dimensions are about 4mm x 105mm. 320 kJ energy. Fired from a coilgun at 0.0001° spread, the rounds are almost perfectly accurate and hit the same spot. What I found in single-layer tests was that fibers tend to beat everything in every physical aspect, and among non-fibers RCC and Boron Fiber were by far the most mass-effective. Mass effectiveness is calculated as: Hits to Kill ÷ (Density * Thickness). Note: this is using the Realistic Stock Materials mod.
1 cm armor / sorted by mass effectiveness: | material | hits to kill | mass effectiveness | | UHMWPE Fiber | 3.667 | 0.378 | | Aramid Fiber | 3.333 | 0.231 | | LCP Fiber | 3.000 | 0.214 | | PBO Fiber | 3.000 | 0.195 | | RCC | 3.000 | 0.171 | | Boron Fiber | 3.667 | 0.148 | | Beta Titanium | 3.667 | 0.078 | | CrV Steel | 3.333 | 0.045 | | Maraging Steel | 3.000 | 0.037 |
/ sorted by mass effectiveness: | material | hits to kill | mass effectiveness | | UHMWPE Fiber | 5.000 | 0.172 | | LCP Fiber | 4.667 | 0.111 | | Aramid Fiber | 4.667 | 0.108 | | PBO Fiber | 4.000 | 0.087 | | RCC | 4.000 | 0.076 | | Boron Fiber | 4.000 | 0.054 | | Beta Titanium | 4.667 | 0.033 | | Maraging Steel | 4.667 | 0.019 | | CrV Steel | 3.667 | 0.016 |
I suspect I'm asking too much of the materials. 320 kJ across 12.56 mm 2 is .... a lot. Compared to your favorite UV laser, that's 25.46 GJ/m 2 per impact. I may take a look at editing the wiki or adding my results to the thread. I should test this with 1 g bullets, and potentially 'square' cylinder rounds with equal height & diameter. Spaced HyVel / whipple testing is TBA. There I'm noticing aluminum, copper, and lead working well as shock layers. Though, since the shock layer at the impact point is destroyed after one shot... it needs more thought. I notice a +1 to +1.7 hit to kill improvement over 1 m graphite aerogel and 1 cm UHMWPE base with no shock shield. I did test Amorphous Carbon but... I can't really find what that is so I'm omitting it in favor of more 'realistic'/feasible materials. It had a mass effectiveness between RCC and BF. As a result of testing my capital ships tend to be wrapped in Dyneema™ or Spectra™, and a layer of Nomex™ -- given its excellent impact performance and top-tier laser protection. Gameplay wise I notice comparable armor performance to before, with an extra 1-2 km/s thanks to their extreme light weight. |
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