The workshop that Fan Wubing last inspected was the armored technology workshop. In Que'er's special alloy armored technology research room for combat vehicles and ships.

Regarding the confrontation between armor and shells, the first one can be traced back to the era of cold weapons. After the beginning of the age of firearms, as the planes fly, armor in the original sense gradually withdrew from the stage of history. During this period, the killing of firearms on personnel can only be described as horror.

During this period, from the beginning of the firearm era to the emergence of tanks, it can be said that armor is at an absolute disadvantage. Only steel helmets in infantry can provide limited protection for the head, while armored cars cannot be used on a large scale due to insufficient power and poor off-road performance, resulting in almost no protection during infantry charge during field battles, and the casualties are shocking.

Things came to World War I. On the 6th month of the lunar month, a major turn began to take place. On this day, forty-nine diamond-shaped steel monsters were put into the front line of the Suoyao River that was in a stalemate at that time. The rolling tracks crushed the German defense line. The weapons of the Ge era in the history of human land war were born. In order to keep it secret, the British named this weapon blocked, which originally meant a water tank, and later became the name of this weapon, tank, a weapon of the Ge era in the history of modern land war was born.

In the early days, the defense of tanks relied on riveted high-carbon steel plates. Before World War II, more firm and reliable armor connection methods such as welding and casting began to be put into use on tanks. In addition, the application of alloy steel and the proposal of inclined armor theory have led to a leap forward in the tank's protection level.

However, during this period, the improvement of protective power was mainly achieved by increasing the thickness of the armor. However, the idea of ​​simply increasing the thickness has great limitations. Because due to the technical level and passability of the power system, the tank cannot be made too heavy, and the inclined armor seriously limits the space inside the vehicle and does not save weight. Therefore, the threat of shells makes engineers have to find another way, find ways to improve protection by changing the composition of the armor material, etc.

The breakthrough was first found on the maritime overlord battleship at that time. In order to improve protection, the battleships at that time generally used surface hardened steel, so German engineers thought of using surface hardened steel on tanks to enhance the protection of the tank.

Of course, this is also related to the poor quality of German steel. German steel plates of the same thickness are often much lower than those produced in the Soviet Union in some key parameters. Although this method takes a lot of time, it has good efficacy. Therefore, surface-treated alloy steel is commonly used on German tanks.

At the beginning, this treated armor effect was quite good. In the battle against the Soviet Union, the tiger tank that used 100 mm of surface hardened steel as front armor resisted the attacks of many Soviet armor-piercing shells. The warheads of many armor-piercing shells were directly smashed by the armor surface, leaving only shallow marks on the Xi armor, while ordinary shells were bounced away directly.

However, behind the glory of the surface is a crisis, because the basic principle of surface hardening armor is to rely on high hardness to cause fatal damage to invading warheads to prevent penetration. After the warhead is hard enough or some protective measures are taken, the advantages of surface hardening armor are destroyed.

The new armor-piercing bomb relies on its high initial and high hardness and high density heavy metal core, making the hardened layer formed by the surface hardening armor consumed a lot of working hours and became useless. The surface hardening armor completely lost its advantage on survival. Its complex and time-wasting processing technology makes its cost too high. The loss of efficiency and high cost make the surface hardening armor withdraw from the stage of history. However, the surface hardening armor should be said to be the first armor made using two materials with different physical properties, although it is not very successful. However, its position in the history of tank development still needs to be affirmed.

In the years after the war, the world did not emerge from the shadow of war, and the shadow of the Cold War once again enveloped the entire earth. The fierce arms race began again. As the king of land warfare, the tanks were naturally improved with the flight of two huge military machines, NATO and Warsaw Pact.

In the early post-war period, the internal structure of the tank became reasonable, allowing the tank to thicken the main armor as much as possible when the weight was not increased. The physical thickness of the front armor of the turrets of mainstream medium-sized tanks in various countries generally increased, and cast armor became the mainstream. For example, the United States adopted the form of full casting of the body turrets, while the British captain of the 100-man was a semi-cast body with a casting turret, while the Soviet Union used the form of welded body with a casting turret.

At this time, the energy-concentrating armor-piercing bomb appeared. The principle is to pierce armor by the energy of the charger itself. It mainly relies on making the charger into a hollow cylindrical column with conical holes and adding a metal cover to the surface of the conical holes. In this way, when the explosion occurs, it will form a metal energy jet with great temperature and pressure, which is the energy-concentration effect, destroying the armor.

At that time, the tanks used the space connection to increase physical thickness to strengthen defense were not saturated. It was almost impossible to use the increase in armor thickness to fight armor-piercing bombs alone, especially the emergence of anti-tank missiles, which made some people doubt whether the tank had reached its end. For a time, the position of the king of land warfare in the tank was facing an unprecedented crisis.

But the tank did not sit and wait for death. A new tank that was released in 1964 responded to the threat of armor-piercing bombs in a new way. This tank is an epoch-making knot.

The body of this tank uses a multi-layer composite structure armor plate. The structure from the outside to the inside is forged steel plate, ceramic material, high-hard forged steel plate, glass fiber, ceramic material and anti-neutron material layer. Although the physical thickness is only about 200 mm, its protection ability reaches 500 mm of ordinary surface hardened steel plate, and its weight has not been significantly improved. The tank did not leave the stage of history under the attack of anti-tank weapons. On the contrary, it improved its own performance, making the performance of the tank more perfect.

"To give a simple example, we can prove that the front of the Shikou turret has excellent defense capabilities. In an experiment at the Smolensk shooting range, the Soviets used the ones obtained from the defected Americans for experiments. First, they fired the homogeneous armored target plate, and the result was that they could penetrate the target plate 500 mm thick. Then, Tao Xiao used Tao to shoot a scrapped full of ammunition and placed the rabbit on the driver's seat with a low-cost armor set. As a result, after a loud bang, the missile accurately hit the left front of the turret, but it did not break down, and the rabbit placed in the tank was safe and sound. After measurement, the missile only dug out a pit on the tank, and in the tank produced later, the front of the turret was filled with gold and sand, so its defense ability can be imagined." The head of the Armor Technology Laboratory introduced to Fan Wubing.

The Soviet Union, who tasted the sweetness of composite armor, fully equipped this advanced armor on the tanks it produced, including replacing and upgrading kits for old tanks. However, due to cost limitations, the expensive and powerful ceramic composite armor was not popularized in the huge Soviet tank troops. For example, as a low-end tank in the Soviet tank troops, the simplified composite armor was used on the body for a considerable period of time. The structure was steel armor, and the middle layer was glass fiber. The inner layer was steel armor. This composite armor was relatively cheap and the overall protective effect was still fair.

However, at this period, the power of anti-tank missiles has increased significantly due to the improvement of technology, which has posed a severe challenge to the tank's protection system. At this time, Western countries finally developed their own composite armor, which is the famous Chopperm composite armor.

Chobam armor is composed of high-hard steel, ceramic tiles and flexible composite materials in aluminum sleeves. In terms of elastic resistance, its biggest highlight is that it focuses on the use of different materials' impact on the ballistics, so that when the armor-piercing bomb is incident, it will deviate through different material-type ballistics. The flexible materials used in it allow the material to produce strong displacement, thereby breaking the bullet body and achieving the effect of preventing penetration. This effect similar to Tai Chi's force-beating force.

The new challenges forced the Soviets to adopt new measures to maintain their advantages in the field of armor, so they used new ceramic composite armor on young tanks, using titanium alloy to constrain the rod-like structures made of ceramics, and then sealed them into the tank's turret. As for the vehicle body, the same may be true, of course, the cost is also very high.

"In fact, we have very little information on this. Obviously, we use more advanced technology for the latest and more advanced tanks, but the Russians are very careful and have no way to get it." The laboratory head told Fan Wubing, "But the overall idea is also very clear for us."

Fan Wubing nodded and nodded, he had no doubt about this. As long as the Chinese people know a little about the principles, they can create better products than the original creators.

Soon, Fan Wubing came to the design room accompanied by the laboratory leader. Many employees were designing composite armor, such as mediating material ratios, selecting ingredients of different materials for filling, etc. Most of the designs were completed in a computer.

However, domestic technology in special alloy steel has indeed started a little late, and although it has been catching up over the years, it has never been able to make relatively ideal progress due to raw materials and other reasons.
Chapter completed!