Non-Destructive Testing of Sensor Enhanced Armor

Abstract

The US Army is replacing conventional armor with new types of ballistic protection which are lighter in weight than the materials they replace yet offer the same degree of protection. A key component of this new type of armor is called Multi Functional (MFA) or Sensor Enhanced Armor (SEA) because the armor provides more capabilities than traditional ballistic protection for the soldier and ground vehicle. In this paper we shall concentrate on the real-time health monitoring of SEA. We have developed a method which has been applied to several types of new ballistic protection. We use ultrasonic waves to excite the armor panel. We measure the response to the excitation when the ballistic protection is known to be undamaged and store the results in a database. To determine if the armor has been damaged, we measure it again and compare the new results to the contents of the database.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 09, 2011
Accession Number
ADA547381

Entities

People

  • Samuel Ebenstein
  • Thomas J. Meitzler
  • Thomas Reynolds

Organizations

  • United States Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Armor
  • Armor Plate
  • Detectors
  • Engineering
  • Fingerprints
  • Frequency
  • Frequency Response
  • Ground Vehicles
  • Measurement
  • Monitoring
  • Physicians
  • Sine Waves
  • Systems Engineering
  • Transducers
  • Vehicles
  • Waves

Readers

  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Autonomous Capabilities and Mission Reconnaissance.
  • ballistics.