The resistance offered by three ceramic materials of varying strength that havebeen subjected to explosive loading has been investigated by depth-of-penetration testing. Each material was completely penetrated by a tungstencarbide cored projectile and the residual penetration into a ductile aluminiumalloy backing material was measured. The resulting ballistic performance of eachdamaged ceramic was found to be similar implying that the resistance offered tothe projectile by the damaged ceramic is not dependent on the intrinsic strengthproperties of the intact material. This was taken as evidence that the importantcontrolling parameter for enhancing the ballistic performance of a damagedceramic material was not the strength of the ceramic but rather the fragmentmorphology.
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