Establishment of a Manufacturing Process for Producing Optically Transparent Armor.
Abstract
A program was conducted to establish a process for the production of useful sizes of optically transparent ceramic armor. The program concentrated on the scale-up of transparent magnesia sheets to 8 x 8 inches. Significant effort was spent in raw material evaluation, mixing of powders, scaling-up the vacuum hot pressing, annealing the hot pressed discs, polishing and coating the magnesia surfaces and bonding magnesia sheets together. The result was a process for fabricating large scale discs of magnesia. A production evaluation was made in which 122 discs were fabricated. The yield of optically transparent magnesia discs averaged 35%. Most rejects were caused by gases in the powder leaving clustered microvoids which resulted in hazy areas. This series optical defect appeared to be related to powder variances, all of which are not understood at this time. Density, purity, flexural strength, modulus of elasticity, hardness number, total light transmission, haze and ballistic properties of finished magnesia material were determined. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1970
- Accession Number
- AD0878337
Entities
People
- John E. Niesse
- Thomas Vasilos