A new type of armour plating.....

[RF]

Not sure whether this goes under Off Topic or under naval technology but here goes.....

I've just had an E-mail about a research paper just published at the University of Indiana concerning the properties of neutron stars. Some of these deep outer space objects are as small as 20 km across and have a mass greater than the Sun. A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh in the order of 100 milion tons and the material would be about 10 billion times harder than steel.
A thought occured to me that a coating of this stuff on a battleship would make it impervious to shellfire and torpedoes - but could such a ship possibly float? If it could it could be truly unsinkable.....

[lwd]

Under conditions on the Earths surface free neutrons are unstable. The coating would decay in to protons and electrons fairly rapidly. These would likely react very quickly with the atomosphere to form water and a lot of heat.

[rtwpsom2]

The heat would cause steam and there you have an environmentally friendly smoke screen.

[Legend]

To actually be able to produce this material, and to make enough of is to coat any size vessel, the least of all a battleship or CV(N), would be so expensive and resource costly, that it would be indefinitely more easier to just add more steel and kevlar armor. Another consideration: Weight. As you pointed out, any practical ammount that would be possible to actually coat would be so heavy, you would waste thousands of truckload trips just carrying a fraction of a teaspoon each load. Also, the weight would most likely be too great for any ship to actually stay afloat.

If one was to thin this coat down though, it would be improbably difficult to create a coat thin enough to be evenly coated around the entire hull. Remember, a single stray drop could give the precarious ship a heavy list, and a coat this thin could possibly cause holes in the armor, or just have extremely weak spots.

Though on the flip side, if a material was discovered and utilized, that created a sandwich layer around the armor... This material would have to be EXTREMELY DURABLE (to a point where you could just use it as armor) to withstand the gravitational forces and decomposition of the armor... and to protect the armor from outside forces, to keep the armor from dematerializing and destroying the ship itself.


My opinion: Just add more steel

[RF]

It was just a thought that came to my mind. Obviously a more realistic solution would be to find some intermediate or alloy solution so that the material would be say two or three times harder than steel rather than the extreme properties of the neutron star. And again it assumes that both the material and technology would be available for WW2......

[lwd]

I believe modern ceramic type armors are significantly harder than steel. Some alloys may also meet your sepcifications. For instance titanium alloys are tougher (if not necessarily harder than steel). DU is also harder although I'm not sure by what factor. There are some significant safety hazards however in forming and shaping it and getting enough of it together to armor a BB might create a bit of a hazard in and of itself. I guess you could sandwidch it.

[Bgile]

Modern tanks have advanced armor, but I suspect it would be prohibitively expensive to scale it up to warship sizes.

[Legend]

Absolutely right. Tank armor is good for things of that scale, but making it to the scale it would take to protect any size warship would be both more expensive than the entirity of the rest of the ship itself, and a serious saftey hazard. Ceramics might work, but the active explosive armor at that scale could have the potential to blow the ship itself up...

[lwd]

Active armor would work well against BB sized AP rounds that's not what it's desinged to do. Something like Phalanx might have some effect though. Todays superior metalurgy would also be of significant import.

[Bgile]

Active armor would work well against BB sized AP rounds that's not what it's desinged to do. Something like Phalanx might have some effect though. Todays superior metalurgy would also be of significant import.

US Tanks at least do not use reactive armor, but from what I've seen I'd guess it's about a foot thick on front hull and turret face.

[lwd]

RHA equivalancy of the M1's vary quite a bit by model and threat. There has been considerable amount published on the web although non of it is official.
http://208.84.116.223/forums/lofiversio ... 26751.html
Indicates some of the newer variants (TUSK) does have some reactive armor.
They talk some about thicknesses here:
http://208.84.116.223/forums/lofiversio ... 263-0.html
If you poke around on that site they used to have some protection estimates on most modern vehicles by a reasonably credible independent source.

And of course there is wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams
which state a couple of feet estimate RHA equivalant but a lot of that is slope I think.
This page:
http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/abrams.htm
states:

M1A1 HA (Heavy Armor), and had a protection equivalent to 600 mm against kinetic energy ammunition (APFSDS), and 1,300 mm against chemical energy warheads

Protection vs full caliber rounds is likely different.

[Legend]

Thay have add on reactive armor. I have seen it. In the feild the engineers get upgrade "kits" and may choose to add more on if they wish... though it does add substantial weight to the already heavy Abrams...

[Bgile]

Thay have add on reactive armor. I have seen it. In the feild the engineers get upgrade "kits" and may choose to add more on if they wish... though it does add substantial weight to the already heavy Abrams...

I would be interested in a photo or a link. Of the many photos I have seen of M1A1s and personal observation in the Armored Cavalry, I have never seen reactive armor on an M1A1.

[Legend]

Hmmm... Can't find one. I'm thinking I saw it on a program with footage maybe. I remember the armored skirt and squarish plating on the front. I believe this is the next generation striker of the future though...

[lwd]

... Of the many photos I have seen of M1A1s and personal observation in the Armored Cavalry, I have never seen reactive armor on an M1A1.

I suspect in part because it's part of the TUSK package for the M1A2. If you do a search on "M1 TUSK" you may turn up some info. One of the links I posted above has some data on it don't remember if it's got a picture or not.