Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Impact studies of five ceramic materials and pyrex" ?
The authors measured the ballistic performance offive ceramic materials ( alumina, silicon carbide, boron carbide, aluminum nitride, and titanium diboride ) and Pyrex, when they are backed by thick steel plates. The projectile for all tests was a rightcircular cylinder of tungsten sinter-alloy W2 with length 25. For this threat the authors determined the minimum area1 density of each material that is needed to keep the projectilefrom penetrating the backup steel. For all of the facing materials studied here, this performance measure increases approximately linearly with projectile velocity. However, the rate of increase is significantly lower for aluminum nitride than for the other materials studied. Their computer simulations show the significant influence of the backing material on ceramic performance, manifested by a transition region extending two projectile diameters upstreamfrom the material interface.