The expanding use of traditional transparent armor (TA) windows in smaller and lighter vehicles to enhance warfighter safety highlights the necessity to find lighter weight solutions to minimize vehicle performance degradation. While ultra lightweight TA solutions are available using a transparent polycrystalline material such as Spinel, the cost benefit is not easily realized on many smaller platforms. A new transparent armor solution capable of decreasing the solution weight by 25% while maintaining the ballistic performance can be achieved using one of two methods. The first method employs the use of advanced polymeric backing material to replace pieces of soda lime glass. The second method uses an advanced transparent glass ceramic strikeface material to decrease the amount of soda lime glass in the final solution. Both methods are capable of achieving the performance requirements no more than 2x the cost of current TA. TA & T will fabricate and test two separate TA solutions to determine the best material. Selection criteria will be based on a cost/performance comparison of the tested systems.
Keywords: Armor, transparent, glass ceramic, aliphatic polyurethane, lamination, lightweight, low cost, ground mobility vehicle