Benefits of CPS HybridTech Armor® Tiles and Modules

This results from the combination of compressive stress in the core ceramic and the strength and stiffness of the encapsulation materials.  The amount of compression depends on the type of ceramic used, the type of reinforcement used in the surrounding metal matrix composite, and the thickness of the encapsulation, but any amount of compression improves the ballistic resistance of the ceramic.   Ceramics have very high compression strengths but poor tensile strength, because of defects present in all ceramics.  A residual compression stress means that the ceramic has to undergo a larger applied tensile stress before reaching the limiting failure stress.  This can be likened to the remarkably tough Corning CorelleTM dinnerware in which the glass/glass-ceramic material is greatly toughened by placing the surfaces in compression via a laminated structure in which the material at the core is different from those at the surfaces, and the differences in coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) create the surface compressive state. 

These modules contain energy like nothing you have seen before.   HybridTech Armor® tiles and modules don’t behave like your grandfather’s ceramic tiles.  They are even tough enough to drill and bolt, just like metal.  The module pictured here had a ½-inch bolt, torqued to 120 ft-lb and showed no evidence of cracking when NDE inspected afterward.  The photos on the next page compare the damage to monolithic ceramic tiles and HybridTech™ when struck with an armor piercing bullet at muzzle velocity.  In every test so far the damage from a ballistic strike has been contained within the tile struck.   Adjacent tiles are intact, even when in direct contact, without spacing or gap-fillers.