Hi all, I am new to the list so if I goof up on this, have some forgiveness
and don't flame out. Let me know if "wrong list", "off the subject" or
something else wrong.
I read one of the articles about angled armor and I believe the author missed
the point. The angle that an AP (armor piercing) round hits at does matters
and makes the armor effectively thicker.
To test this take a business envelope and a ruler and hold it perpendicular to
the envelope and measure the thickness. Do the same thing 30, 45 and 60
degrees off of perpendicular. What you will find is that the the thickness
increases
with the angle. This was one of the first upgrades in the armor vs AP race
that started about 1840's and is still going on.
From: Scott Siebold gamers@ameritech.net
> I am new to the list
Hi Scott.
> I read one of the articles about angled armor and I believe the author
If I recall the thread correctly, the initiator said that a sloped plate does
give effectively greater thickness, but also covers more
area. So he/she was wondering if the weight from the extra area
offsets the savings from the slope.
I didn't keep up with the thread, but given that at least one list
member designs anti-tank weapons for a living, I assume that the thread
eventually included the correct explanation of the whys and wherefores.
This leads into the standard "welcome to the list" speech: we're happy to see
you. We're a little peculiar at times, but most of us are civil most of the
time, and there are experts in a surprising number of fields on this list:
several astronomers, at least a platoon of computer programmers, several
soldiers, a couple of biologists. If you need to know what regiments were at
Cold Harbor, or what colors go with a Blue Ringed Octopus, or what it feels
like to get thrown 100 feet when a mine goes off under your tank, then someone
here can probably tell you.
> On 28-May-02 at 21:20, Scott Siebold (gamers@ameritech.net) wrote:
> missed the
Sorry about the late reply, I'm going through old e-mails.
What was finally determined is sloped armour is no better for
thickness of armour than an _equivalent mass_ of non-sloped
armour. As a matter of fact it may be a bit worse because you need a larger
undercarriage to have the same internal volume.
However... Sloped armour increases the chance of a glancing shot. This is
where you gain.
I'm not going into the math, anyone with basic geometry can work through it
themselves. For those without the math is in the archives.
> Roger Books wrote:
> >I am new to the list so if I goof up on this, have some forgiveness
> does matters
Sorry for the even later reply, but... er, no, that's not it :-/
Glancing
shots are not very common at all - IIRC a modern round (KE or HEAT,
doesn't matter much) needs an angle of attack of 80 degrees or more from the
perpendicular to have a significant chance of being deflected
However, there are at least four other areas where you do gain:
1) the sloping armour also serves as your top armour
2) if the hit does not hit perpendicular to the armour face in the
horisontal plane - and it usually doesn't - then a sloping armour plate
"gains thickness" much faster than a vertical one (this can be shown by, and
3) if you're talking about composite armours rather than WW2-style solid
steel, sloped armour layers are much better at breaking up a KE projectile or
HEAT jet than vertical ones.
4) if you *are* talking about WW2-style solid steel plates, it is much
harder to make thick plates of armour-grade steel than it is to make
thin plates so by sloping your armour you improve the effective armour
thickness without having to increase the actual thickness of your armour
plate.
I'll stop here :-/
Later,