BALLISTIC TESTING OF COMMERCIAL ALUMINUM ALLOYS AND ALTERNATE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES TO INCREASE THE AVAILABILITY OF ALUMINUM ARMOR

摘要

The US Army Research Laboratory has been examining commercially available aluminum alloys for substitution for the aluminum armor materials of the current military specifications. Additionally, an investigation of alternate processing techniques was undertaken to increase the availability of current military specification aluminum armor alloys and these techniques were ballistically tested utilizing the current specification requirements. This work was required to reduce the production demand on military specification MIL-DTL-46027J(MR) 5083 aluminum armor, proposed for application in a number of ongoing US vehicle programs. The result of this work has been the revision of the current aluminum armor military specification for 5083 to include 5059 aluminum and issuing a new specification for 6061 aluminum.