Slat armor, also known as bar armor, cage armor and standoff armor, is a type of vehicle armor designed

to protect against anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attacks. It takes the form of a rigid slatted metal grid fitted around key sections of the vehicle, which disrupts the shaped charge of the warhead by either crushing it, preventing optimal detonation from occurring, or by damaging the fuzing mechanism, preventing detonation outright. Although slat armor is effective against incoming missiles, it does not offer complete protection as many as 50% of impacts are unimpeded by the slat design.

An element of explosive reactive armour consists of a sheet or slab of high explosive sandwiched between two plates, typically metal, called the reactive or dynamic elements. On attack by a penetrating weapon, the explosive detonates, forcibly driving the metal plates apart to damage the penetrator. Against a shaped charge, the projected plates disrupt the metallic jet penetrator, effectively providing a greater pathlength of material to be penetrated. Against a long rod penetrator, the projected plates serve to deflect and break up the rod. The disruption is attributed to two mechanisms. First, the moving plates change the effective velocity and angle of impact of the shaped charge jet, reducing the angle of incidence and increasing the effective jet velocity versus the plate element. Second, since the plates are angled compared to the usual impact direction of shaped charge warheads, as the plates move outwards the impact point on the plate moves over time, requiring the jet to cut through fresh plate material. This second effect significantly increases the effective plate thickness during the impact.

The penetration of projectiles into targets involves complex mechanical interactions. By convention [5] the following simplifying definition are adopted. When a round has entered a target but not passed completely through it, it is said to have penetrated the target. The depth of penetration is given by the distance p as show in Fig. 2a. When a round passes completely through a target, it is said to have perforated the target, as showing in fig.2b. In theory, the ballistic limit velocity is the velocity at which the projectile will just perforate the target and emerge from the target with zero residual kinetic energy. In practice, of a number of identical projectiles fired at identical speed at a single target, some will perforate and some will not. The ballistic limit velocity is therefore defined as the velocity at which a projectile has a 50% probability of perforating the target and is given the symbol V50.

The cosine rule[edit]

Even though the increased protection to a point, provided by angling a certain armour plate with a given normal thickness causing an increased line-of-sight (LOS) thickness, is of no consideration in armour vehicle design, it is of great importance when determining the level of protection of a designed vehicle. The LOS-thickness for a vehicle in a horizontal position can be calculated by a simple formula, applying the cosine rule: it is equal to the armour's normal thickness divided by the cosine of the armour's inclination fromperpendicularity to the projectile's travel (assumed to be in the horizontal plane) or:

where : Line of sight thickness : Normal thickness : Angle of the sloped armour plate from the vertical

For example, armour sloped sixty degrees back from the vertical presents to a projectile travelling horizontally a line-of-sight thickness twice the armour's normal thickness, as the cosine of 60 is . When armour thickness or rolled homogeneous armour equivalency (RHAe) values for AFVs are provided without the slope of the armour, the figure provided generally takes into account this effect of the slope, while when the value is in the format of "x units at y degrees", the effects of the slope are not taken into account.

Reactive armour is a type of vehicle armour that reacts in some way to the impact of a weapon to reduce the damage done to the vehicle being protected. It is most effective in protecting against shaped charges and specially hardened long rod penetrators. The most common type is explosive reactive armour(ERA), but variants include self-limiting explosive reactive armour (SLERA), non-energetic reactive armour (NERA), non-explosive reactive armour (NxRA), and electric reactive armour. Unlike ERA and SLERA, NERA and NxRA modules can withstand multiple hits, but a second hit in exactly the same location will still penetrate. Essentially all anti-tank munitions (with the exception of HESH) work by piercing the armour and killing the crew inside, disabling vital mechanical systems, or both. Reactive armour can be defeated with multiple hits in the same place, as by tandemcharge weapons, which fire two or more shaped charges in rapid succession. Without tandem charges, hitting the same spot twice is much more difficult.
Metals are very common materials used in armour application. Metals defeat the projectile by blunting, and hence hardness of metal plays a vital role. Armour can be classified into three categories i.e. metallic, nonmetallic and composites.

Steel, Aluminum and Titanium are the three main metals which either alone, through alloying by heat treatment and other processing techniques result in, armour materials. Mostly hardness and toughness are the two properties which greatly influence the ballistic performance of metals. Rolled Homogeneous Armour (RHA) is strong, hard and tough and comprises the bulk of past, present and likely future armour material. It was found that steel at maximum hardness, and with enough toughness resists cracking in all situations, providing the best ballistic performance. Therefore RHA has remained the standard armour of most tanks though the threat level has gone up to the level that even 1000 mm thick steel armour appears inadequate. Dual hardness armour (DHA) steel was developed to achieve improved performance over RHA. Armour piercing threats are typically defeated by fracturing them using a hard face plate and then catching the debris with a softer back phase. DHA steel has 59-63 Rock well hardness is used for steel plate face and 50-53 HRC for back plate. Aluminum is another metal that is used for armour applications, it is a light weight metal, it is commonly used on APC and armoured cars. Aluminum alloy (5083-H131) is a non-heat treatable strain hardened Aluminum Magnesium alloy. It is resistant to cracking and stress corrosion cracking. Future developments in Aluminum armours focus on attaining higher strength without sacrificing dynamic ductility while maintaining all the corrosion and weldability characteristics. Titanium is considered superior to most other metallic armour. Titanium armour development started in late 1950s. The low density of Titanium compared to steel was one of the criteria for its attraction, but because of high cost compared to steel it is preferred for usage in aircraft. Some notable examples of its use include USAFs A-10 Thunderbolt II and the former Soviet Russia-built, Sukhoi Su-25 forming a bath-tub shaped Titanium enclosure for the pilot as well as Russian Mi-24 attack helicopter. Because of high density, depleted Uranium can also be used in tank armour, sandwiched between sheets of steel armour plate. For instance production of M1A1HA and M1A2 Abram tanks have depleted Uranium reinforcement as part of armour plating in the front of hull and front of the turret. Ceramic Armour Ceramics are known to show a considerable promise as a material withstanding high velocity threats. The principle advantage of ceramic over conventional steel is high comprehensive strength and hardness, and low density. Because of its high hardness, a ceramic when impacted by a projectile, blunts its tip and creates shock waves within the shot that shatter the plate. Alumina, Boron Carbide, Aluminum boride and Titanium diboride are the candidate materials for ceramic armours. Nearly all successful ceramic armours are dense, single phase monolithic materials. A major problem in the use of ceramic armour is the extent of damage zone accompanying a primary hit. Radial and spall cracks propagate through the ceramic outward from the site of impact leading to fragmentation of the ceramic. Such damage can to some extent be reduced by increasing the rigidity of the baking plate in order to limit the bending stresses generated during impact. Thus monolithic plates have limitation. Therefore, the motivation for new types of armour plates. These new designs use two and three dimensional arrays of ceramic elements that can be rigid, flexible or semi flexible. Dragon skin body armour is one of these systems. One novel approach is to use hook and loop fasteners to assemble the ceramic arrays.

An active protection system is a system (usually for a military application) designed to prevent antiarmor line-of-sight weapons from acquiring and/or destroying a target. Electronic countermeasures that alter the electromagnetic, acoustic or other signature(s) of a target thereby altering the tracking and sensing behavior of an incoming threat (e.g., guided missile) are designated softkill measures. Measures that physically counterattack an incoming threat thereby destroying/altering its payload/warhead in such a way that the intended effect on the target is severely impeded are designated hardkill measures.

Rolled homogeneous armour , or RHA, is a theoretical basic type of steel plate, usedas a baseline to compare the effectiveness of military vehicle armour. This can be used toprotect the vehicles from spalls or blasts. Through the end of World War II, the type of

Fracture Mechanics and NanoTechnology for Defence armour for almost alltanksand other armoured vehicles was sheets of steel.Increasing theprotection on a vehicle meant adding thicker sheets of steel, increasing the vehicle's weightand reducing its mobility. Since then, other forms of armour, incorporating empty spaces andmaterials such asceramicsor depleted uraniumin addition to steel, have been developed.Made ineffective by modern weapons using high-impact or hightemperature cutting jets,RHA itself is obsolete due to advances in vehicle armor. The more recent term RHAe (RolledHomogeneous Armour equivalency) is used when giving a rough estimate of either thepenetrative capability of aprojectileor the protective capability of a type of armour whichmay or may not besteel.There are many recent advances in making RHA steel stronger and lighter in weight.There came many substitutes and still much of research is going on in this field. Carbonnanotubes (CNTs) areallotropes of carbon. A single-walledcarbonnanotube (SWNT) is aone-atom thick sheet of graphite(calledgraphene) rolled up into a seamlesscylinder withdiameter on the order of ananometer . This results in a nanostructure where the length-todiameter ratio exceeds 1,000,000. Such cylindricalcarbon moleculeshave novelproperties that make them potentially useful in many applications innanotechnology,electronics,optics and other fields of materials science. They exhibit extraordinary strength and uniqueelectricalproperties, and are efficientconductors of heat.Inorganic nanotubeshave also beensynthesized.

Nanocomposites are materials that are created by introducingnanoparticulates (often referred to as filler ) into a macroscopic sample material (often referred to as thematrix ). This is part of the growing field of nanotechnology. After addingnanoparticulatestothe matrix material, the resulting nanocomposite may exhibit drastically enhanced properties.For example, addingcarbon nanotubestends to drastically add to theelectricalandthermalconductivity. Other kinds of nanoparticulates may result in enhancedoptical properties, dielectric propertiesor mechanical properties such asstiffnessandstrength.In general, thenanosubstance is dispersed into the matrix during processing. The percentage by weight(called mass fraction ) of the nanoparticulates introduced is able to remain very low (on theorder of 0.5% to 5%) due to the incredibly highsurface area to volume ratioof nanoparticulates. Much research is going into developing more efficient combinations of matrix and filler materials and into better controlling the production process.