Silicon doped boron carbide a lightweight impact resistant material

许多应用都需要抗冲击轻质材料，包括：1)航空航天工业，特别是需要防止高速空间碎片的卫星2)弹道个人装甲。在这种情况下，高质量的轻型装甲对于保护士兵和让他们有效地发挥作用至关重要。在这两种情况下都会发生高速撞击，重量至关重要。碳化硼具有成为一种极好的材料的潜力，因为它非常硬，非常轻；然而，它在冲击或高压载荷下意外破碎。我们已经在初步工作中表明，通过仔细调整材料的化学性质，添加少量硅，可以抑制高压载荷下的破碎机制，尽管尚不清楚这是否转化为改善的冲击性能。因此，在这项工作中，我们的目标是详细研究碳化硼变形的机制，以及如何通过少量添加硅来改变碳化硼变形。这将涉及在高分辨率电子显微镜下变形材料，以了解材料的哪些部分首先失效以及如何失效。在这些实验的同时，在更大的样品上进行高速气枪实验将帮助我们了解变形是如何通过材料移动的，这在抗冲击材料中尤为重要。除其他事项外，这将要求我们在陶瓷加工知识方面有相当大的改进，以生产大量的硅稳定碳化硼，特别是用于气枪实验。然而，如果成功的话，这些知识将直接关系到我们的工业合作伙伴，他们将能够迅速利用它。该项目所需的尖端分析将依赖于分析技术的发展，这些技术可以在未来应用于一系列其他材料。这包括高速光谱诊断工具，目前在该国尚不存在。

There is a need for impact resistance light weight materials for a number of applications including, 1) for the aerospace industry, particularly satellites where protection from high speed space debris is required 2) ballistic personal armour. In this case, high quality light weight armour is essential to protect soldiers and to allow them function efficiently. In both cases high velocity impacts occur and weight is crucial. Boron carbide has the potential to be an excellent material as it is very hard and very light; however it unexpectedly fragments under shock or high pressure loading. We have shown in preliminary work that by carefully adjusting the chemistry of the material with small additions of Silicon the mechanism of fragmentation under high pressure loading is suppressed, although it is unclear if this translates to improved impact performance. Therefore in this work we aim to study in detail the mechanism by which boron carbide deforms and how this is altered by small additions of Silicon. This will involve deforming the materials within a high resolution electron microscope to understand which parts of the materials fail first and how. In parallel to these experiments, high velocity gas gun experiments on larger samples will help us understand how the deformation moves through the material, this is particularly important in impact resistant materials. Among other things this will require considerable improvements in our ceramic processing knowledge to produce the large amounts of the silicon stabilized boron carbide particularly for the gas gun experiments. However, if successful this knowledge will directly relevant to our industrial partners who will be able to quickly exploit it. The cutting edge analysis that will be required for this project will rely of devolvement of analytical techniques that can be applied in the future to a range of other materials. This includes high speed spectroscopic diagnostic tools which do not exist in the country at this time.