Name: Cyril Besnard
Supervisor: Dr Luc Vandeperre and Dr Finn Giuliani.
Sponsor: DSTL
The aim of this project, supported by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory of the UK, is to develop novel ceramics for use in armour. Lightweight impact resistance ceramics are still under development. B4C is attractive and has already been used for this application for many decades. However catastrophic failure occurs in B4C at the high pressures achieved during high velocity impacts, which is due to collapse of a weak polytype within the structure. Previous research has suggested that doping with silicon can eliminate this polytype and therefore improve the high velocity impact performance of B4C. Therefore the aim of this project is to produce meaningful quantities of Si doped B4C which can be used for high speed impact testing. This project is also in collaboration with the shock physics group at Imperial College