Designing hybrid backplate structure for ceramic composite armor to resist armor-piercing incendiary projectiles

The topic of this paper is to develop a lightweight helicopter ceramic composite armor with high resistance to both perforation and blunt injury threats posed by Type-54 12.7 mm armor-piercing incendiary (API) projectiles. Specifically, ballistic experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of hybrid backplate structures, made of TC4, Aramid II composite, and UHMWPE composite, on the impact response of ceramic composite armor plates. Multi-scale damage morphology characterization and numerical simulations were employed to reveal the impact response mechanism of armor plate. The results indicate that compared to armor plates with UHMWPE laminate as the backplate, those utilizing TC/UHMWPE hybrid laminate and TC/Aramid II/UHMWPE hybrid laminate exhibited respective increases of 116.19 % and 141.20 % in anti-penetration performance, as well as 15.31 % and 30.61 % in anti-trauma performance. This improvement is attributed to the higher support capacity of the hybrid structures and the alignment of their material configuration with the impact-induced damage modes. Throughout the impact process, the API projectile experiences non-uniform deceleration, while the response zones of both ceramic panel and hybrid backplate first undergo a brief initial acceleration followed by deceleration. These findings provide valuable guidance for the structural design of lightweight ceramic composite armors for helicopter applications.