What are the characteristics of Ceramic bulletproof plates?

Materials used in armor have come a long way from the early metals to the recent high-performance bulletproof materials. Attempts on the use and improvement of various materials have never stopped.

For many years, armors were produced using various metals and alloys. Until recent years, the emergency of high-performance materials and super strong ceramic synthetic materials has brought great changes in the bulletproof industries. They are gradually replacing traditional metals as the mainstream materials for making bullet-proof equipment in the bulletproof products field. Ceramic armor can be used to protect vehicles as well as individual personnel. Ceramics are known to be some of the of the hardest materials, whose application dates to 1918, and unlike materials such as Kevlar (which uses its fibers to "catch" the bullet), ceramics break the bullet at the moment the impact happens. Ceramic plates are usually used as inserts in soft ballistic vests.

The commercially manufactured ceramics for armor include materials such as boron carbide, aluminum oxide, silicon carbide, titanium boride, aluminum nitride, and Syndite (synthetic diamond composite). Alumina, silicon carbide and boron carbide are the most common ceramic materials used to make ceramic inserts on the market, among which the boron carbide is the strongest and lightest, and accordingly the most expensive. Boron carbide composites are primarily used for ceramic plates to protect against smaller projectiles, and are used in body armor and armored helicopters. Silicon carbide is a more widely used ceramic composite bullet-proof insert material because of its more moderate price, similar density and hardness to boron carbide, and is primarily used to protect against larger projectiles.

In addition, in the current bullet-proof industry, some ceramic processing technology such as sintering, reaction bonding and hot pressing has been developed.

The mechanical properties of a few types of ceramic armors are displayed in the table below:

The mechanical properties of a few types of ceramic armors are displayed in the table below:

In summary, we can find that ceramic composite bulletproof plates, as the mainstream of plates on the current market, have the following advantages over traditional metal plates:

1. High-performance armor protection

2. Higher hardness and lower weight

3. Excellent resistance to creep and stable structure

Of course, ceramic material has some defects, for example, the structure and property of the ceramic plate determine that it will crack after being hit by a bullet, meaning that the same spot cannot resist a second bullet. Therefore, you should keep in mind that never to wear a ceramic plate that have been hit by bullets, which properly fails to protect our safety. In addition, most of the ceramic plates are mosaic made of ceramic pieces, so the joint always has a weaker protective capability, cannot provide comprehensive protection like the metal plate or pure bulletproof fiber plates.