Structure
AMAP is making use of new advanced steel alloys, Aluminium-Titanium alloys, nanometric steels, ceramics and nano-ceramics. The new high-hardened steel needs 30% less thickness to offer the same protection level as ARMOX500Z High Hard Armour steel. While Titanium requires only 58% as much weight as rolled homogeneous armour (RHA) for reaching the same level of protection, Mat 7720 new, a newly developed Aluminium-Titanium alloy, needs only 38% of the weight. That means that this alloy is more than twice as protective as RHA of the same weight.
AMAP is also making use of new nano-ceramics, which are harder and lighter than current ceramics, while having multi-hit capability. Normal ceramic tiles and a liner backing have a mass-efficiency (EM) value of 3 compared to normal steel armour, while it fulfills STANAG 4569. The new nano-crystalline ceramic materials should increase the hardness compared to current ceramics by 70% and the weight reduction is 30%, therefore the EM value is larger than 4. Furthermore the higher fracture toughness increases the general multi-hit capability. Some AMAP-modules might consist of this new ceramic tiles glued on a backing liner and overlaid by a cover, a concept which is also used by MEXAS. Lightweight SLAT armour is also part of the AMAP family. In excess new nano-ceramic armour overlaying a vehicle's base armour, which is backed up by a spall-liner, can archieve a weight reduction of more than 40% to meet the Level 3 of STANAG 4569. Furthermore AMAP's glue and lining components are working efficiently even at high temperatures (like 80 °C (176 °F)).
AMAP is a modular protection concept, therefore several modules, some of them in different variants according the required protection level, are formed. The efficiency may be increased if more types of AMAP-modules are used.
Read more about this topic: Advanced Modular Armor Protection
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Who says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows—it must grow; nothing can prevent it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)