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Post by bigbombr on Oct 28, 2016 12:15:40 GMT
5 cm of boron (outermost), 10 m of graphite airogel and 5 cm of para-aramid fiber failed to completely stop a 5 missile barrage (standard flak warhead, impact at approx. 3.8 km/s). At least 3 shots went completely through. (These test were performed against a stationary target.) My original armour scheme results in a vessel 6.6 Mc more expensive when compared with a vessel with Si-airogel armour only. Against missiles, the increase of CIWS and added redundancy by having more vessels outweigh any advantage armour may provide as far as I can tell. The issue is your whipple shield is far far too thick. Try it again but with 5mm of boron on the outside. Even a thick whipple shield of basalt fiber is worse than a thinner one. All it is there to do is break up the projectile and as it is fully supported by the aerogel underneath it can be really thin and still do a superb job and making it thicker only makes the aerogel worse. The missiles still blasted through. Granted, the target is not maneuvering, so no delta-v is wasted on course-corrections so the missiles can put almost all their delta-v (4.03 km/s) in building up speed. But I don't think there is feasible armour capable of stopping 10 kg worth of shrapnel at 3.6+ km/s hitting every second or so. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 28, 2016 12:40:51 GMT
The issue is your whipple shield is far far too thick. Try it again but with 5mm of boron on the outside. Even a thick whipple shield of basalt fiber is worse than a thinner one. All it is there to do is break up the projectile and as it is fully supported by the aerogel underneath it can be really thin and still do a superb job and making it thicker only makes the aerogel worse. The missiles still blasted through. Granted, the target is not maneuvering, so no delta-v is wasted on course-corrections so the missiles can put almost all their delta-v (4.03 km/s) in building up speed. But I don't think there is feasible armour capable of stopping 10 kg worth of shrapnel at 3.6+ km/s hitting every second or so. Hmm in my experience it isn't that hard to protect against that with stuffed whipple shields assuming the missiles are not all hitting the exact same place. I believe a good idea would be to try out using silica aerogel as it has much better properties so even a thinner amount of it should provide quite a nice amount of armor. In addition try adding another layer of stuffed whipple shields to the outside of the one you currently have. |
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Post by Durandal on Oct 28, 2016 13:07:48 GMT
I've been having very good performance from a two-layer set of graphite aerogel. 50 cm with a 6 cm space followed by another 50 cm. I've had it above a main armor belt of Van-Chromium Steel, I've had a 2 cm layer of boron above it, lots of different combos, but the 50-6-50 layer of graphite aerogel seems to work well against a lot of stuff. One ship I tested with only had the 50-6-50 layer on top of of a 6mm layer of amorphous carbon and it was able to survive a sustained fire long enough to maneuver away.
Tested against both stock gunship fire and against improved weapons some of which are based on player designs.
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Post by nivik on Oct 28, 2016 15:53:13 GMT
I've been having very good performance from a two-layer set of graphite aerogel. 50 cm with a 6 cm space followed by another 50 cm. I've had it above a main armor belt of Van-Chromium Steel, I've had a 2 cm layer of boron above it, lots of different combos, but the 50-6-50 layer of graphite aerogel seems to work well against a lot of stuff. One ship I tested with only had the 50-6-50 layer on top of of a 6mm layer of amorphous carbon and it was able to survive a sustained fire long enough to maneuver away. Tested against both stock gunship fire and against improved weapons some of which are based on player designs. Over in the Post Your Designs thread, we're seeing another threat pop up: a missile with long radiators made of high-density material, being used as a hypervelocity machete. It's apparently doing a lot of spread-out damage to Whipple shields. I'm going to start working on a line of ships that use the recent advances in graphite aerogel armor, then see if I can adopt the dense-radiator KKVs to strip it. I also have a theory that optimizing for missile momentum on impact (as opposed to kinetic energy) may pay dividends against low-strength armor like aerogel. I intend to test that as well. |
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Post by Durandal on Oct 28, 2016 16:06:55 GMT
I've been having very good performance from a two-layer set of graphite aerogel. 50 cm with a 6 cm space followed by another 50 cm. I've had it above a main armor belt of Van-Chromium Steel, I've had a 2 cm layer of boron above it, lots of different combos, but the 50-6-50 layer of graphite aerogel seems to work well against a lot of stuff. One ship I tested with only had the 50-6-50 layer on top of of a 6mm layer of amorphous carbon and it was able to survive a sustained fire long enough to maneuver away. Tested against both stock gunship fire and against improved weapons some of which are based on player designs. Over in the Post Your Designs thread, we're seeing another threat pop up: a missile with long radiators made of high-density material, being used as a hypervelocity machete. It's apparently doing a lot of spread-out damage to Whipple shields. I'm going to start working on a line of ships that use the recent advances in graphite aerogel armor, then see if I can adopt the dense-radiator KKVs to strip it. I also have a theory that optimizing for missile momentum on impact (as opposed to kinetic energy) may pay dividends against low-strength armor like aerogel. I intend to test that as well. I know. I posted it.  |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 28, 2016 16:13:54 GMT
Over in the Post Your Designs thread, we're seeing another threat pop up: a missile with long radiators made of high-density material, being used as a hypervelocity machete. It's apparently doing a lot of spread-out damage to Whipple shields. I'm going to start working on a line of ships that use the recent advances in graphite aerogel armor, then see if I can adopt the dense-radiator KKVs to strip it. I also have a theory that optimizing for missile momentum on impact (as opposed to kinetic energy) may pay dividends against low-strength armor like aerogel. I intend to test that as well. I know. I posted it. Hmm one thing to note is I have been testing the armor against 1720 mm diameter coil guns throwing 150 kg pancakes at it and most stuff whipple shields are quite resistant to it it does pen now and then as it is 150 kg going at 19.2 km/s and I personally am not sure how effective spreading out the impact area will be considering the fact that heavy packed whipple shields laugh at pretty much all kinetic kill missiles. Ok after testing it doesn't help at all against massed graphite aerogel with one surface and one inner 5mm thick basalt fiber whipple shields. 2 cm of nickel phosphorous microlattice behind the exterior whipple shield followed by 1.5 meters of graphite aerogel another 5mm thick basalt fiber whipple shield and then 10m of graphite aerogel. Didn't even leave a visible mark from a 7.15 ton fully fueled missile with 5.09 km/s of delta v with two 1 ton 1.5 m x 28 cm x 14.9 m osmium radiators. |
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Post by ross128 on Oct 28, 2016 16:19:22 GMT
Note that a huge diameter is highly detrimental to achieving penetration. If you keep the mass the same but reduce the diameter (assuming you can do so without shattering the barrel or the projectile) you'll likely get better results.
Long-rod penetrators exist for a reason.
Edit: in the context of radiator-fan missiles though, this is partially mitigated by each element of the fan having a small cross-section, so it can function as an improvised blade. Not as good as a long-rod penetrator, but it will have better penetration characteristics than a pie-plate of the same diameter.
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Post by uberdude9001 on Oct 28, 2016 16:22:05 GMT
Okay, so I tried out some Kinetic Kill Missiles design that can pretty much destroy any stock ship. Against ship armored with thick graphite gel whipple shield layer? You need to have a bunch of them together to rip through the armor apart. A LOT of them. Okay, I just tested this and it seems like a bug. I had 1t missiles tipped with a 150kg rod of Osmium slamming into ships at 5-6km/s, they would often pierce both sides of the whipple shield, obviously passing through internal modules like fuel tanks and reactors in the process. Despite the entry and exit holes clearly indicating this the inner armor layers and modules were often completely undamaged. |
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 28, 2016 16:46:30 GMT
Note that a huge diameter is highly detrimental to achieving penetration. If you keep the mass the same but reduce the diameter (assuming you can do so without shattering the barrel or the projectile) you'll likely get better results. Long-rod penetrators exist for a reason. Edit: in the context of radiator-fan missiles though, this is partially mitigated by each element of the fan having a small cross-section, so it can function as an improvised blade. Not as good as a long-rod penetrator, but it will have better penetration characteristics than a pie-plate of the same diameter. Agree with you, but if you're overpenetrating the target then this is exactly what you want to increase the amount of energy put into the target and not sailing out the other side. With the impact velocities that some people are coming up with breaching the armor doesn't exactly seem like its a problem. |
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Post by ross128 on Oct 28, 2016 17:03:19 GMT
Note that a huge diameter is highly detrimental to achieving penetration. If you keep the mass the same but reduce the diameter (assuming you can do so without shattering the barrel or the projectile) you'll likely get better results. Long-rod penetrators exist for a reason. Edit: in the context of radiator-fan missiles though, this is partially mitigated by each element of the fan having a small cross-section, so it can function as an improvised blade. Not as good as a long-rod penetrator, but it will have better penetration characteristics than a pie-plate of the same diameter. Agree with you, but if you're overpenetrating the target then this is exactly what you want to increase the amount of energy put into the target and not sailing out the other side. With the impact velocities that some people are coming up with breaching the armor doesn't exactly seem like its a problem. ___________________________________________________________________ That is pretty much the balancing act. All other things equal, if the projectile is failing to penetrate, reduce the cross section. If it's running the target clean through, increase the cross section so it can do more damage instead. I was mostly pointing out that if he was having a hard time getting a 17cm pie plate through armor, decreasing the radius should help with that.  |
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 28, 2016 17:36:34 GMT
Agree with you, but if you're overpenetrating the target then this is exactly what you want to increase the amount of energy put into the target and not sailing out the other side. With the impact velocities that some people are coming up with breaching the armor doesn't exactly seem like its a problem. ___________________________________________________________________ That is pretty much the balancing act. All other things equal, if the projectile is failing to penetrate, reduce the cross section. If it's running the target clean through, increase the cross section so it can do more damage instead. I was mostly pointing out that if he was having a hard time getting a 17cm pie plate through armor, decreasing the radius should help with that. Ah... I missed Cap'm Joe's post that you were referring to. Well, nevermind then (in other news; a 172cm coilgun?! That's beyond WWII naval battleship caliber!) |
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Post by bluuetechnic on Oct 28, 2016 17:59:03 GMT
Are you guys still accounting for the nuclear EFPs we discovered earlier? On pages 5 and 6 they beginning to be seen as the biggest threat, but I haven't really seen them discussed at all since then. Admittedly I didn't go through the whole thread again, but I'm pretty sure they're a highly credible threat.
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Post by nivik on Oct 28, 2016 18:15:10 GMT
Note that a huge diameter is highly detrimental to achieving penetration. If you keep the mass the same but reduce the diameter (assuming you can do so without shattering the barrel or the projectile) you'll likely get better results. Long-rod penetrators exist for a reason. Edit: in the context of radiator-fan missiles though, this is partially mitigated by each element of the fan having a small cross-section, so it can function as an improvised blade. Not as good as a long-rod penetrator, but it will have better penetration characteristics than a pie-plate of the same diameter. Yeah. I'm mostly considering how to chew up that fluffy overcooked Cool-Whip coating so that follow-up shots can have the desired effect. :3 Given the low strength of the material, I'm not concerned about penetration in the conventional sense. If I had to carry through enough force to punch through the backing layers, I'd definitely care, but if I'm just trying to (literally) knock the stuffing out of your ship, I want to spread the love around so that my follow-up shots have a chance to hit a freshly denuded section of hull. That's one reason why I'm considering the possibility of using a momentum-maximized missile. Stress is a function of force, momentum is equivalent to force over time. The armor's poor physical properties may allow a slower, more massive missile to crush the armor into powder. Hard to say for sure without trying it out, and I'm not at my home machine right now, sadly. I'm discouraged somewhat by the testing performed by captinjoehenry; those are some really massive, really wide slugs he's talking about. But I'm going to give it a shot anyway. For those who might want to try this, maximizing the momentum of a missile requires a mass ratio of e, or 2.72. The missile's delta-v will be equal to its exhaust velocity. If that doesn't wind up working...well, life finds a way. I'll sort something out. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 28, 2016 18:15:54 GMT
Ah... I missed Cap'm Joe's post that you were referring to. Well, nevermind then (in other news; a 172cm coilgun?! That's beyond WWII naval battleship caliber!) Yeah it is silly huge but if I make it smaller it very very rapidly becomes a shotgun not a cannon And considering the fact that it is only suitable for heavy cap ships you really want to start hitting your enemy at as long a range as possible. It also takes less than 200 kw to through 5 150kg rounds down range at 19.2km/s every second The loader uses 100 MW and the reaction wheels use 100s of MW And it still rotates barely above 1 degree a second |
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Post by nivik on Oct 28, 2016 18:18:02 GMT
Are you guys still accounting for the nuclear EFPs we discovered earlier? On pages 5 and 6 they beginning to be seen as the biggest threat, but I haven't really seen them discussed at all since then. Admittedly I didn't go through the whole thread again, but I'm pretty sure they're a highly credible threat. I have a compact 95 ton NEFP (10x200 cm, approximately) that I'm considering trying as the last stage in a multistage shipkiller MIRV. NEFPs currently have some fusing issues, though: they hit the target without detonating as often as not. |
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