Elastomer-Encapsulated, Laterally-Confined Ceramic Plates for Ballistic Armor Applications

Not Available In the proposed SBIR program, Powdermet will demonstrate the feasibility of producing near net-shape Gr-reinforced syntactic SiC foam mirror structures. Powdermet will utilize an innovative combination of microencapsulation, powder metallurgy, and reaction bonding in addition to the use of carbon and silica microballoons, to produce extremely lightweight, low CTE, thermally stable mirror structures. The resultant structures will consist of a reaction bonded Gr/SiC mirror surface graded into a syntactic, Gr-reinforced syntactic SiC foam made net-shape using a slip-cast and sinter consolidation technique. The mirror structure will be built up onto plaster molds and sintered, eliminating all but the final stages of polishing. The ability to eliminate all but the final stages of polishing will allow for the fabrication of high optical quality structures having significantly lower areal density, at lower processing costs. Thermal distortion and density will be minimized through the use of Gr-reinforced SiC syntactic foam, which has an approximate density and thermal expansion coefficient (CTE) of 600Kg/m3 and 1.3 ppm/K respectively with a modulus of over 60 Gpa. By producing syntactic foam honeycomb supports, the density will be further reduced to less than 250 Kg/M3 while sacrificing less than 35% of the structural stiffness.