Structural ballistic armour for transport aircraft

Abstract

This paper describes the structural response of a current ceramic-faced composite armour system and a proposed structural armour system for aircraft use. The proposed structural ballistic armour system is shown to be capable of providing significant structural integrity even after ballistic impact whilst providing ballistic protection equivalent to an existing applique system. The addition of a carbon fibre reinforced plastic front panel to the existing ceramic faced composite armour system improves the bendstrength by a factor of 3 and improves the energy to break by almost an order of magnitude.