Application of welding for the production of ballistic protective structures

Abstract

In the common industry and especially in military industry there is a growing need for production of highly effective protective structures. For that purposes the most used materials are armor steels. They belong into a group of the fine-grained, increased strength steels, which are manufactured by intensive thermo-mechanical treatment at high temperatures and later quenching and low-tempering. Combination of the heat and mechanical treatments provides for the fine grains and exceptionally good properties of these steels, while the low-tempering enables relatively high hardness and good ballistic properties. However, sometimes there is a need to weld these steels in order to manufacture some specific assemblies. Since the way these steels are produced this is why the welding can negatively affect the material properties in specific zones of the welded joint, what could lead to worsening of the material's ballistic properties, as well. The aim of this paper was to determine influence of the welding procedure on that mechanical and ballistic properties. In that order the model plates were welded with the specially prescribed technology in three types of the joints: the butjoint, corner joint and the corner joint with the shielding plate. After the welding the test plates were subjected to the ballistic tests which consisted of shooting with three types of live ammunition at different types of the welded joints. At the end the comparative analysis of the results is given.