Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour

Icelander · 02-12-2018, 08:56 AM

I've found evidence that flash bainite treatment is currently being used to make the production of ballistic steel trauma plates cheaper and simpler, which makes me optimistic that the solutions discussed are practical. They even offer custom sizes and shapes, but only in very limited configurations and with great trouble even for fitting the armour to a boxy vehicle, so they might still count as limited to Solid only in Pyramid #3/85 'Cutting-Edge Armor Design' terms. At least they cannot combine the BHN 500-600 hardness with steel alloys that they can form into very complex shapes and any type of welding will create a 0.75-1.5" join area where the hardness suffers significantly and heavy caliber AP rounds can penetrate in that area.

From the guys who trademarked the name 'Flash® Bainite' for the process, they take custom orders by request in e-mail or phone communication and also sell pre-made plates at gun shows. Usually, their plates are of BHN 500 hardness and 1/4" plates provide protection well beyond what NIJ Level III requires. They do weigh almost ten pounds per square feet, though. Source: Gary M. Cola, at Flash Bainite / SFP Works LLC / Sirius Protection LLC.

The US Military has tested similar 'Flash® Bainite' armour plates in 2010, specifically an alloy the manufacturer simply calls AR600, due to the BHN hardness (but the US Army referred to in more complicated terms, of course), and according to Gary Cola, the flash bainite plates passed. The Army found plates weighing 10 pounds per square foot of protection proofed against point blank M2AP .30-06 (APHC doing 25+ damage in GURPS, translating to DR 48-52) and 20mm Fragment Simulation Projectile (FSP), which meets or exceeds NIJ Level IV. In comparison, 20% to 60% more material by weight was required to match this performance in plates made from titanium and hardened steel alloys used for vehicle armour (inc. commercial AR500 and the mil-spec equivalent).

Later tests apparently show that their Flash® 500 steel can stop M2AP .30-06 at lower speeds (2100 fps), ca 200-300 yards range for a typical .30-06 rifle firing military M2AB ammunition, and 20mm FSP at typical fragment weights, at that same areal density. The lower hardness steel may not resist fast-moving APHC rounds as well as the higher hardness AR600 steel from Flash® Bainite, but 10 pounds per square foot of it are apparently enough to rate NIJ Level III and get around DR 28-40 in GURPS. Unofficially, this level of protection has been tested against .50 BMG and can stop them at long range, but not point blank. The harder Flash® AR600 'should' stop .50 BMG at point blank, based on the performance against M2AP, but as far as I know, no scientific tests have been carried out in that caliber.

I've got some information related to 4130 steel subjected to flash bainite, which was apparently provided to US Army ARDEC for evaluation, in a PDF hosted on the Google Drive Folder and Dropbox Folder for the Jade Serenity campaign. It's not got the actual testing data for the ballistic tests performed at Aberdeen and three other labs. The test results themselves are classified (probably just SECRET) and NOFORN, due to the testing of mil-spec alloys alongside it. General information about the results is available in numerous commercial publications by Flash Bainite, which still doesn't constitute independent verification, but I see no special reason to doubt that the armour passed testing.

There doesn't appear to be any good reason why flash bainite could not be used to make slightly less hard alloys to make a complete set of field plate armour from. It wouldn't have the WM 0.2 implied by the tested performance of the Flash® Bainite AR600 steel, as that appears to be a real hassle to form into anything but simple shapes, but it should be able to get WM about equal to titanium alloys, while still being cheaper to make. Hell, Flash® 500 gets around WM 0.27-0.29, which is better than the 'CEAD' 'Titanium Alloy' at WM 0.35, and both AR600 and Flash® 500 have DR/inch well over what 'Ultra-Strength Steel' gets, at least against small arm threats (i.e. piercing). As noted earlier, I wouldn't object, on realism grounds, to giving such very hard steel alloys 50% to a 100% higher DR against piercing than against the cr, cr ex, burn, imp of many other types of battlefield threats. That would mean their DR against anything other than HVP ballistic threats would be divided by 1.5 to 2, making their WM for all other purposes effectively WM 0.3 to 0.45.

According to "The Science of Armour Materials, 1st Edition” edited by Ian Crouch (1 page excerpt in PDF form): "Commercial off-the-shelf steel sheet, plate (up to 61 mm wide and 6.6 mm thick), and tubing (12e63 mm in diameter) can be transformed to flash bainite." Tjhat may have been true when he wrote it, but larger and thicker plates have been transformed into flash bainite by now.

SFP Works LLC / Flash Bainite have extensively tested the flash bainite process at armour thickness of up to 3/8" flat or gently curved plate, i.e. Solid, in GURPS 'CEAD' terms. That's far thicker than anything that Vargas would wear and it neatly fits the thickest plates that civilian trucks with added armour are likely to need/want. 1/8" flash bainite AR500 steel stops 7.62x51mm NATO APHC rounds at the speeds where they are going subsonic, which translates into about DR 15-25 in GURPS, probably around DR 18-20.

4 mm to 5 mm armour plates made of flash-bainite AR500 steel would reliably stop any rifle round that you could expect to face in Mexico, and with a good ballistic polymer underlayer, even 3 mm armour of slightly less hardness should give decent protection from common hunting or military surplus 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm rounds. Perhaps not complete protection, but enough to make the vast majority of hits that don't completely bypass the armour survivable.

One new product from Flash Bainite is allegedly tubing of up to 1800 MPa, room temperature stampable and readily weldable steel. 'Flash 1800' is supposed to be stronger than titanium, lighter than aluminum and lower cost than high strength steel. It sounds like a very good candidate to cover areas that need complex shapes and where less than NIJ Level III performance might be acceptable. 'Flash 1800' only become available at the end of 2016, though, so is probabaly not be available to the Caballero Templarios in February 2017, at least not for them to play around with making themselves (I expect they can order it directly from the factory). In any case, they need other shapes than tubing, I should think. But it demonstrates the flexibility even of tough steel from Flash Bainite.

The machinery to make steel for various purposes, like 'Flash AR500' and a variety of tool steels, would have been available to license in 2015 and the CT cartel could have been playing around with them since that time. That includes, as far as I can determine, making very strong steels that can still be formed into nearly any shape, from AISI-1020 or AISI-4130 steel alloys.

That is assuming that Flash Bainite will sell machinery capable of doing almost everything they can do at their factory to a cover company in Mexico, probably a chain of mechanic workshops pretending to be branching out into being a very custom car detail shop. While I can't speak to their willingness to do anything shady, Flash Bainite has no inherent objections to marketing their process to companies involved in the civilian LAV (Light Armoured Vehicles) industry in Colombia or Mexico.

They are not allowed to export their 'AR600' steel outside the continental US, as that has been certified as MIL-DTL-46100E armour steel by the US Army. Some issues would also apply to any technology specifically related to the heat treatment of that high hardness steel, but everything else they make can be exported anywhere. That includes flash bainite AR500 and any hypothetical slightly softer steel that would be formed into a black plate harness for Vargas.

02-12-2018, 08:56 AM	#130
Icelander Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Iceland*	Actual Data on Flash® Bainite Armour! I've found evidence that flash bainite treatment is currently being used to make the production of ballistic steel trauma plates cheaper and simpler, which makes me optimistic that the solutions discussed are practical. They even offer custom sizes and shapes, but only in very limited configurations and with great trouble even for fitting the armour to a boxy vehicle, so they might still count as limited to Solid only in Pyramid #3/85 'Cutting-Edge Armor Design' terms. At least they cannot combine the BHN 500-600 hardness with steel alloys that they can form into very complex shapes and any type of welding will create a 0.75-1.5" join area where the hardness suffers significantly and heavy caliber AP rounds can penetrate in that area. From the guys who trademarked the name 'Flash® Bainite' for the process, they take custom orders by request in e-mail or phone communication and also sell pre-made plates at gun shows. Usually, their plates are of BHN 500 hardness and 1/4" plates provide protection well beyond what NIJ Level III requires. They do weigh almost ten pounds per square feet, though. Source: Gary M. Cola, at Flash Bainite / SFP Works LLC / Sirius Protection LLC. The US Military has tested similar 'Flash® Bainite' armour plates in 2010, specifically an alloy the manufacturer simply calls AR600, due to the BHN hardness (but the US Army referred to in more complicated terms, of course), and according to Gary Cola, the flash bainite plates passed. The Army found plates weighing 10 pounds per square foot of protection proofed against point blank M2AP .30-06 (APHC doing 25+ damage in GURPS, translating to DR 48-52) and 20mm Fragment Simulation Projectile (FSP), which meets or exceeds NIJ Level IV. In comparison, 20% to 60% more material by weight was required to match this performance in plates made from titanium and hardened steel alloys used for vehicle armour (inc. commercial AR500 and the mil-spec equivalent). Later tests apparently show that their Flash® 500 steel can stop M2AP .30-06 at lower speeds (2100 fps), ca 200-300 yards range for a typical .30-06 rifle firing military M2AB ammunition, and 20mm FSP at typical fragment weights, at that same areal density. The lower hardness steel may not resist fast-moving APHC rounds as well as the higher hardness AR600 steel from Flash® Bainite, but 10 pounds per square foot of it are apparently enough to rate NIJ Level III and get around DR 28-40 in GURPS. Unofficially, this level of protection has been tested against .50 BMG and can stop them at long range, but not point blank. The harder Flash® AR600 'should' stop .50 BMG at point blank, based on the performance against M2AP, but as far as I know, no scientific tests have been carried out in that caliber. I've got some information related to 4130 steel subjected to flash bainite, which was apparently provided to US Army ARDEC for evaluation, in a PDF hosted on the Google Drive Folder and Dropbox Folder for the Jade Serenity campaign. It's not got the actual testing data for the ballistic tests performed at Aberdeen and three other labs. The test results themselves are classified (probably just SECRET) and NOFORN, due to the testing of mil-spec alloys alongside it. General information about the results is available in numerous commercial publications by Flash Bainite, which still doesn't constitute independent verification, but I see no special reason to doubt that the armour passed testing. There doesn't appear to be any good reason why flash bainite could not be used to make slightly less hard alloys to make a complete set of field plate armour from. It wouldn't have the WM 0.2 implied by the tested performance of the Flash® Bainite AR600 steel, as that appears to be a real hassle to form into anything but simple shapes, but it should be able to get WM about equal to titanium alloys, while still being cheaper to make. Hell, Flash® 500 gets around WM 0.27-0.29, which is better than the 'CEAD' 'Titanium Alloy' at WM 0.35, and both AR600 and Flash® 500 have DR/inch well over what 'Ultra-Strength Steel' gets, at least against small arm threats (i.e. piercing). As noted earlier, I wouldn't object, on realism grounds, to giving such very hard steel alloys 50% to a 100% higher DR against piercing than against the cr, cr ex, burn, imp of many other types of battlefield threats. That would mean their DR against anything other than HVP ballistic threats would be divided by 1.5 to 2, making their WM for all other purposes effectively WM 0.3 to 0.45. According to "The Science of Armour Materials, 1st Edition” edited by Ian Crouch (1 page excerpt in PDF form): "Commercial off-the-shelf steel sheet, plate (up to 61 mm wide and 6.6 mm thick), and tubing (12e63 mm in diameter) can be transformed to flash bainite." Tjhat may have been true when he wrote it, but larger and thicker plates have been transformed into flash bainite by now. SFP Works LLC / Flash Bainite have extensively tested the flash bainite process at armour thickness of up to 3/8" flat or gently curved plate, i.e. Solid, in GURPS 'CEAD' terms. That's far thicker than anything that Vargas would wear and it neatly fits the thickest plates that civilian trucks with added armour are likely to need/want. 1/8" flash bainite AR500 steel stops 7.62x51mm NATO APHC rounds at the speeds where they are going subsonic, which translates into about DR 15-25 in GURPS, probably around DR 18-20. 4 mm to 5 mm armour plates made of flash-bainite AR500 steel would reliably stop any rifle round that you could expect to face in Mexico, and with a good ballistic polymer underlayer, even 3 mm armour of slightly less hardness should give decent protection from common hunting or military surplus 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm rounds. Perhaps not complete protection, but enough to make the vast majority of hits that don't completely bypass the armour survivable. One new product from Flash Bainite is allegedly tubing of up to 1800 MPa, room temperature stampable and readily weldable steel. 'Flash 1800' is supposed to be stronger than titanium, lighter than aluminum and lower cost than high strength steel. It sounds like a very good candidate to cover areas that need complex shapes and where less than NIJ Level III performance might be acceptable. 'Flash 1800' only become available at the end of 2016, though, so is probabaly not be available to the Caballero Templarios in February 2017, at least not for them to play around with making themselves (I expect they can order it directly from the factory). In any case, they need other shapes than tubing, I should think. But it demonstrates the flexibility even of tough steel from Flash Bainite. The machinery to make steel for various purposes, like 'Flash AR500' and a variety of tool steels, would have been available to license in 2015 and the CT cartel could have been playing around with them since that time. That includes, as far as I can determine, making very strong steels that can still be formed into nearly any shape, from AISI-1020 or AISI-4130 steel alloys. That is assuming that Flash Bainite will sell machinery capable of doing almost everything they can do at their factory to a cover company in Mexico, probably a chain of mechanic workshops pretending to be branching out into being a very custom car detail shop. While I can't speak to their willingness to do anything shady, Flash Bainite has no inherent objections to marketing their process to companies involved in the civilian LAV (Light Armoured Vehicles) industry in Colombia or Mexico. They are not allowed to export their 'AR600' steel outside the continental US, as that has been certified as MIL-DTL-46100E armour steel by the US Army. Some issues would also apply to any technology specifically related to the heat treatment of that high hardness steel, but everything else they make can be exported anywhere. That includes flash bainite AR500 and any hypothetical slightly softer steel that would be formed into a black plate harness for Vargas. __________________ Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 02-13-2018 at 03:23 AM.