摘要: Operation Iraqi Freedom has clearly demonstrated the criticality of transparent armor in many Army systems. As the threats have escalated and become more varied, the challenges for rapidly developing optimized threat specific tran... 展开 Operation Iraqi Freedom has clearly demonstrated the criticality of transparent armor in many Army systems. As the threats have escalated and become more varied, the challenges for rapidly developing optimized threat specific transparent armor packages have become extremely complex. The current industry methodology is to add more glass layers to increase the thickness and thus weight to achieve new protection requirements. ARL began a program to develop a transparent armor using a materials by design approach whereby materials were selected based on the role they play in a ballistic event. The outcome of this approach was a new ARL Multi-Hit Transparent Armor design (patent pending, Patel et al., 2005) based on prior success in ceramic/all- plastic systems, which exploits the synergy of glass and polymers, particularly a rigid poly(methyl methacrylate), PMMA, and has produced a lighter window that can defeat four impacts in a 1 sq ft panel. The impacts were spaced in two adjacent 120 mm triangles. The weight of this new system offers a 30 percent weight reduction while using materials that are commercially available and are comparable in cost to what is being fielded today. In this paper, the role of materials influence including both glass and polymers on the impact efficiency and overall mode of failure is discussed. 收起