Low Cost Sintering of Titanium Diboride for Armor
Abstract
The primary goal of this project was to fabricate lower cost pressureless sintered titanium diboride (TiB2) armor tiles that would exhibit competitive ballistic performance with tiles formed by hot pressing. This was accomplished by using submicron titanium diboride powders synthesized by a plasma/gas phase reaction process originally developed by Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. An initial task pf Phase I of this effort was to develop and optimize fabrication processes for producing armor tile from plasma TiB2 powders having various compaction and sintering characteristics. During this project, it was observed that to attain low-cost fabrication, machining pressureless sintered TiB2 tiles to final dimensions should be minimized or eliminated by processing to net-shape dimensions. Non-machined 6' x 6' x 1' tiles were fabricated from the same powder lot to within 1/16' as part of Phase I. However, damage that occurred as a result of repressing required the tiles to be machined to 5.8' x 5.8' x 1.0'. Extensive process development will be required to successfully fabricate 9' x 9' x 3' tiles. Keywords: Titanium boride, Reactive gases, Powders, Sintering, Flexural strength, Young's modulus, Hardness, Armor. (JES)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1988
- Accession Number
- ADA202377
Entities
People
- M. W. Vance
Organizations
- Alcoa