A study of the penetration behaviour of mild-steel-cored ammunition against boron carbide ceramic armours

It was found that stripping of the jacket, from the AK47 MSC rounds, makes a difference to its penetrating ability: the mild steel core is significantly reduced in length, and mass, when the jacket is not present. The magnitude of this effect is much greater than previously reported for high-strength steel-cored rounds and for tungsten carbide-cored rounds. The penetration event appears to be a twostage process: mushrooming of the mild steel core on, or near, the surface of the ceramic, followed by a linear erosion process as the core penetrates the ceramic itself. The second step has not been reported previously for MSC rounds.