Electric Armor

Ch_Omega and others wrote in about a new type of reactive armor in development. As far as I can tell, what they're talking about is essentially large capacitors on the outside of the vehicle, charged up by the vehicle's electrical system. Anti-tank warheads use a shaped charge to create a jet of molten copper that pierces armor, but in this case, when the jet bridges the capacitor plates, it immediately becomes a conductor for X coulombs of current, which effectively vaporizes and disrupts it enough that it won't pierce the vehicle's armor. (Conventional reactive armor does the same thing with explosives.) Interesting idea, if it works.

Comments

I think you mean

[Lovejoy]

polarize the hull-plating!

1 Step Closer to being able to say, "Shields UP!!!

[Beebos]

Does this remind anyone else of the electroplated armor on the Enterprise of the current series? I'll bet that in one hundred years that we will have an aircraft or spaceship with technology similar to the Enterprise, however rudimentary. Shields and Phasers are forseable in the not to distant future if you look at the progress that has been made in these areas to date. The "Star Wars" people are testing energy weapons to destory nuclear missles right now. Now we are talking about early energy shileds. We have had sensors,pervasive comptuers and communicators for years. However, I doubt warp drives or transporters are just around the corner :-)

interesting, but nontheless silly idea

[lingqi]

okay. let's first work out how much energy is needed to vaporize a chunk of copper.

grumble grumble -- calculate calculate:

A WHOLE FSCKING LOT. not an amount you will get out of a parallel plate capacitor the size of the tank's outer area.

okay you say: i will connect an external capacitor (like one of those nifty maxwell energy discharge capacitors.)

okay... fine. let us suppose that it worked; you charge up the sucker to 75kv, and without even bothering with the physics (10kJ does not vaporize that much copper, btw) -- let's say it worked. and bam we got ourselves a stopped charge.

what happens then? you used up your juice -- the copper vapor does not stay vaporized forever, you know. so there we got some copper solder (pretty much) bridging between the two nodes. do you think you can EVER recharge that capacitor? nope

okay you say: let's divide the outer surface into areas and dis-joint them. THAT WOULD SURELY WORK, right? if one "plate" stops a charge, the others are still charged up and ready to go.

so now let's consider the SIZE of the things. two points become blatently obvious:
1) if you divide the surface area of the tank into small areas, no way in heck will you get enough capacitance on them things to have any effect lest you charge them up to about 750 million volts. goot luck finding a dielectric to withstand that. (or a power-supply, for than matter)
2) given the above, we will be using discharge capacitors individually for each division of the armor. anybody who ever saw a picture of an energy discharge capacitor already know this is rediculous. those things are HUGE. i mean it: the casing can fit a person. not mentioning the weight of all the capacitor oil and dielectric material inside.

so in a last effort, lets suggest: one capacitor, many divisions. we can relay the divisions in and out of the charge section.

HA! relay = massive inductance. don't expect any kind of realistic "copper vaporizing" current if you use a relay. btw... with any kind of respectable current, your relay is probabbly the only thing that will be vaporizing.

so... yeah... vaporware. =)

Re:interference...

[GigsVT]

That is a good question, since the huge discharge would cause a pretty powerful EMP. Military equipment is already hardened to such things though, so it likely wouldn't hurt it too much. Also remember that most of the equipment is inside the tank, which is a big faraday cage.