**3.3 Silicon carbide (SiC)**

Aside from alumina materials which are widely in use today, silicon carbide will be used where significant weight reduction or increased mechanical properties are

**Figure 2.**

*SEM photographs of alumina alumina-based ballistic plates with 96 (a) and 99 (b) mass % and characteristic EDS spectra.*


**Table 3.**

*Physical and mechanical properties of alumina-based ballistic plates manufactured by CeramTec.*

required. This ceramic material has very high hardness and a high strengthto-weight ratio, which makes Silicon Carbide very convenient for armor applications. Besides mentioned properties, the significant parameter for ballistic protection usage is the high impact resistance of the material. The physical and mechanical properties depend on the method of production. It can be produced by Sintering, hot-pressing, hot-isostatic pressing, reaction bonding, and spark plasma sintering. The processing temperature of Silicon Carbide is approximately 1600°C. Nowadays, studies of silicon carbide properties have shown that it was found that one-dimensional nanostructures such as wires, rods, and tubes have received continued interest as a result of their excellent physical and mechanical properties, in comparison to their bulk counterparts. **Figure 3** shows the morphology and EDS spectra of Silicon Carbide ballistic plate and at **Table 4** the physical and mechanical properties of Silicon Carbide-based ballistic plates manufactured by CeramTec.

The study in which they have examined the ceramic composite plate based on Silicon Carbide and Dyneema fibers provide ballistic protection. This type of composite which combines Silicon Carbide and Dyneema fibers provides physical and mechanical properties ballistic protection to the US National Institute of Justice level four (NIJ IV) standards indicating that the plate can resist .30 cal steel core armorpiercing rifle ammunition [34].

**Figure 3.** *SSEM photograph (a) and characteristic EDS spectra (b) of silicon carbide ballistic plate.*


### **Table 4.**

*Physical and mechanical properties of SiC ballistic materials manufactured by CeramTec.*
