Special ceramics in multilayer ballistic protection systems

The paper presents some questions of designing and testing for modern ballistic protecting screens and applied materials especially such as ceramics. Continuous development of present ballistic composite materials enforces the optimisation of existing solutions for ballistic protections in respect to the mass, thickness and costs of material. In times of technological arm race a reduction of armour weight by 5% is a success. It may be achieved by development of new solutions of armour systems applying the newest materials. Ballistic ceramics both enhances the resistance of the armour against armour piercing projectiles and reduces its areal dencity in relation to traditional steel armours due to high mechanical properties, low density, high hardness and dissipation of energy at the mechanism of breaking. The paper illustrates the development of ceramic based armours and the structure of a multilayer ballistic protection, and finally the meaning of its particular layers in fighting the projectile. Moreover the impact of mechanical properties of some ceramic materials used for designing a protection system into its ballistic resistance is discussed.