Ceramic Armor
Saint-Gobain Ceramics
The materials of choice for today’s armor protection systems
Hexoloy-Silicon Carbide SiC, Boron Carbide and Aluminum Oxide, provides ballistic armor protection and bullet resistant composite armour for military personal, vehicles, aircraft and police.
High performance, lightweight ceramic materials for composite armor protection applications.
Saint-Gobain Ceramics offers more than 40 years of experience, including Carborundum and Norton technologies, in the development of high performance materials for composite armor systems.
Our product lines feature a variety of sintered, reaction-bonded and hot pressed ceramic materials including:
- Hexoloy® Silicon Carbide (SiC)
- CRYSTAR RB® & Silit SKDH® Reaction Bonded SiC
- Norbide® Hot Pressed Boron Carbide
- Alumina
- Zirconia Toughened Alumina (ZTA)
- Reinforcements
- Transparent materials
Proven Performance In Demanding Armor applications
Hexoloy-Saint-Gobain Ceramics’ armor protection history includes the delivery of more than 46,000 variable armor system vests to US Army soldiers in Vietnam during the late 1960s. Since then, we have developed numerous SiC and B4C armor protection systems with superior ballistic protection capability for defeating high
velocity projectiles for a full range of ballistic
protection applications including:
- Transport Aircraft Armor Protection
- Helicopter Armor Protection
- Land Vehicles Armor Protection
- AC-130U Gunships Armor Protection
- Body Armor: XSAPI, ESAPI, SAPI for military and police protection
Hexoloy® Silicon Carbide (SiC)
Hexoloy SiC is a pressureless, sintered form of alpha silicon carbide with a density greater than 98 percent theoretical. It has a very fine grain structure (less than 10 microns) for excellent wear resistance and contains no free silicon, which makes it highly chemical resistant. No other commercially
available material offers the performance advantages of Hexoloy SiC including:
- High Hardness. The hardest material commercially available.
-
LightWeight. Weighs less than half of
most metal alloys,40 percent as much
as steel and about the same as aluminum.
-
High Strength. Extremely high strength
and excellent resistance to creep and
stress rupture at temperatures up to
1650°C (3000°F)
-
Design Flexibility. Net shape manufacturing
capabilities eliminate costly machining
operations.
Reaction Bonded SiC
(CRYSTAR® RB & Silit® SKDH)
These materials offer excellent strength oxidation resistance, high modulus and high sonic velocity. They can be molded to a great variety of shapes and sizes. For example, monolithic plates of up to 30” x 30” are available.
Norbide® Boron Carbide
Norbide® Boron Carbide, the third hardest material known to man, offers lightweight, near theoretical density and can be custom engineered to exacting specifications.
Aluminum Oxide
Our aluminum oxide products are the hardest and most rigid of common oxide ceramics.
A Full Complement of Related Armor Materials
Hexoloy-Saint-Gobain Ceramics offers a full array of materials for a complete armor system, including transparent armor, reinforcements and composites.
Product lines include:
- Technical
- Fabrics
- Vetrotex
- Twintex®
- Saphikon®
- Sapphire
Ceramic Material The Way You Need It
We can supply ceramic armor in the following forms:
- Finished components
- Unfinished, machined blanks
- Pressed near net shape components
- High volume pressed net shape components
- Complex, highly machined parts
Saint-Gobain Ceramic Materials for Armor Protection
Your Worldwide Source for Cost-Effective Ceramic Materials.
Saint-Gobain Ceramics offers vast resources to meet your needs for armor protection materials including Silicon Carbide, Norbide Hot Pressed Boron Carbide and Aluminum Oxide. With representation in Asia by Norton KK (a Saint-Gobain company) and locations in Europe, Australia and South America, we can deliver your solution when you need it, where you need it, in virtually every corner of the world.
Datasheets
