Ballistic impact performance of an armor material consisting of alumina and dual phase steel layers

Utilization of a ceramic front layer provides an improvement in the ballistic efficiency of monolithic metallic materials. In the current paper, the ballistic behavior of laminated composite having alumina front and dual phase steel backing layers was studied using 7.62 mm armor piercing (AP) projectiles under normal impact. The variables used were martensite content of the backing layer and the areal density of the composite. Experimental results showed that utilization of a 6 mm thick alumina front layer which was bonded to dual phase steel enhanced the ballistic resistance of the dual phase steel remarkably.