Lightweight Ballistic Armor for Military Aircraft

Many Navy aircraft platforms face the compromise between complete crew protection and diminished mission capability. NanoLab proposes a novel, lightweight aircraft armor solution that is easily manufactured, repairable and cost competitive. This is accomplished using a composite approach to the ballistic strike material, in which ceramic spheres of boron carbide are arranged in a polymer matrix material. Boron carbide has been used in aircraft armor applications for over 4 decades due to its high strength to weight ratio, but it suffers from high cost and low repair-ability. In the Phase I effort, we will develop pressure-less sintering techniques to reduce the cost of this critical material, and incorporate it in a unique form that allows additional defeat mechanisms, mold-ability, and repair.