Tata Steel's Lightweight Armor Steel Can Take a Punch
09/06/2013 - Tata Steel has received orders for more than 200 samples of its perforated armor steel, which has been exported to a number of countries worldwide, including Germany, France, the U.S. and India.
This revolutionary armor steel, formerly known as Super Bainite, has also undergone a number of design improvements and has taken on a new brand name, PAVISE™ SBS 600P.
The company will be exhibiting its PAVISE™ product at next week’s DSEI show, the world-leading defence and security event, which runs from 10–13 September at the ExCel London exhibition Centre.
PAVISE™, which provides an efficient and cost-effective armoring solution for military vehicles, as well as for defended infrastructure such as watch towers or sangars, has now been tested up to STANAG Level 4 to create armor capable of resisting both small arms and heavy machine gun fire with armor -piercing projectiles.
The ballistic performance of PAVISE™ — the way it deals with the effect of projectiles — is at least twice that of conventional rolled homogenous steel armor. The perforated design of the steel creates a large number of edges which disrupt the path of incoming projectiles, significantly reducing their potency.
Henrik Adam, Tata Steel’s chief commercial officer in Europe, said: “Tata Steel has spent significant effort developing this unique product and we are delighted with its performance. As a company we are well positioned to support the market, both in the UK and the wider European markets, and we look forward to receiving the feedback of all the companies currently testing PAVISE™.”
A challenge Tata Steel has addressed and overcome since the product’s launch in 2011 is how to create the perforations in a cost-efficient way. The former production route involved drilling round holes into hard armor steel, which was difficult and expensive. By developing a process to mechanically punch the metal before the steel is hardened, and by making the holes smaller and narrower, Tata Steel has managed to reduce the cost of the perforation process ten-fold. It is also now possible to bend the steel into tight angles in the perforated condition, before hardening to ultra-high levels of hardness.
One effect of the perforations is that the armor becomes almost transparent at a distance of more than a few meters, due to the size and spacing of the holes — a principle known as the Raleigh Criterion. This means the existing camouflage of the vehicle is not compromised when the sections of PAVISE™ are added.
Paul Davies, product marketing manager for PAVISE™ at Tata Steel said: “PAVISE™ offers increased design flexibility to achieve protection against a wide range of threats, without compromising weight or modular performance.
“The number of samples that are already in the field being tested, and the customers that have taken an interest in using them, demonstrate the massive potential this product has for armor ed-vehicle programs.”
Gus King, managing director of Permali Gloucester, a world leader in the manufacture of composite materials for the defense industry, said: "As part of a complete appliqué armor system we have found PAVISE offers unique benefits in particular areas. Tata Steel can achieve impressive lead times which match our composite materials and therefore allow fast-track design of new solutions."
Paul Davies will be available at DSEI on the Tata Steel stand, N9-498 in the Land Zone, for any enquiries about the company’s defense products, including PAVISE™ SBS 600P.
