Isn’t this only relative to tungsten penetrators? Uranium don’t mushroom since they can’t bend, but fracture. So a Du penetrator wouldn’t really expand a hole much either comparatively.
I read a conversation(not here) at one point about people discussing DU vs tungsten and while depleted uranium pens further in a vacuum(not literally, but meaning round for round into unlimited thick plate), tungsten will do about the same in modern day applications because the armor it’s penning isn’t infinitely thick.
So the problem of mushrooming isn’t such a big deal.
BUT
Wouldn’t this also create more spall? A thicker mushrooming penetrator creating a bigger diameter to push out, vs a DU penetrator that shears and relies on secondary pyrophoric effects once penetrated to cause damage.
Meaning a spall liner is more important for tungsten penetrators than uranium?
That is true. DU sharpens as it goes through. I not sure what the exit hole would look like I would imagine smaller than the entry. DU would also ignite on the inside of the tank killing everything inside something not modeled in the game.
Yeah I think it would be cool if they added something like this. Tungsten having better spall cones, but DU penetrators wounding everyone on the inside, so at a minimum the guys are yellow if you pen, And you’re more likely to kill with tungsten from a better spall cone.
Though I’m not sure how a spall liner catches a DU penetration or its spall. Since if the round fragments off. I’d wager insanely hot pieces of metal go through a Kevlar catch unless there’s diagrams that show otherwise which I’d love to see.
The same reason when I was in the Army we could do fuck all against EFP’s. The hot metal would go through everything and when I last read on it, glass was the only thing that relatively slowed it down by cooling it, but wasn’t practical. But my memory is fuzzy on it, it’s been over a decade since I deployed where EFPs were the talk of the town.
So I’m not really seeing how a spall liner is SUPER relevant for a DU penetrator. Once it’s in, it’s gonna fill with flammable particles and the entry hole shouldn’t be much smaller than the exit, the spall liner isn’t catching it, and what makes the round so effective has little to do with spalling by my understanding. And I’d assume the hot chunks of metal punching through would go through Kevlar like hot copper(EFP) did through metal, vests and sapi’s.
So if we were really looking to model things for the game, it would appear to me(and I’d love to learn from someone more knowledgeable) that a spall liner isn’t really doing much against a DU penetrator from what understanding I have on it. There isn’t huge spalling coming off a small hole.
But at this point I’m spitballing and hoping someone bites to learn me some new sheeeit. I’m not really knowledgeable and just parsing together the few things I do know.
a D.U Penetrator would melt / incinerate everything behind it igniting any fuel and ammo, due to its pyrophoric effect post penetration… That’s why i have always said, there are no D.U weapons in this game.
I read somewhere that the spall liner was built into the hull armor behind the internal metal plates, I cant remember where I saw that but I suppose that some metal or kevlar spall liner would catch the spall when the round pens the external armor and then have to deal with the inside layer of metal (most likely panels to cover electronics and wiring) after having all the spall caught by the liner in between the external armor plate and the wiring/interior panels. I saw a picture of the inside of the tank somewhere on the bug reports that showed the internal plating to be secured by screws so there must be some sort of spall liner since the US army likes redundant safety mechanisms. Surely they wouldn’t be so overconfident that they cant be penetrated that they say the PPE worn by crew is enough.
So- if the Abrams DID have an internal spall liner behind a 2mm thick metal sheet covering them, they would be as effective (if not even more, since the 2mm thick plate would be an additional spall liner) as regular spall liners.
Well, not really. If it’s a 2mm metal sheet, there really isn’t any metal to spall; rather, the shell would punch through it just like butter.
For example, a Shilka that was hit by an APFSDS shell; notice how the hole is just the perfect shape of the rod and the fins? There was no spalling at all, the shell just sliced in through.
I’m waiting for a response on the Distribution Code status or FOIA release of a couple key documents, with some other weirdness involved with that particular situation that I won’t go into…
As far as my other project of the L-O Tutorial. I’ve had to hunt down other public documents and information as a way to skirt around the classified or restricted nature of documents regarding certain rounds. And that’s involved sifting through many patents on the USPTO site, and the International and European Patent and trademark office sites. And I just haven’t had the extra free time to make 3D models of all the rounds yet, as it takes time to prep the base 2D Sketch images.
Example, my best current render of 90/40mm T320E10 or E16 based on the descriptions I’ve been able to find. Though I feel like I might need to modify the fins a bit, as the descriptions say swept back at 7-7.5°. However, with this one L-O does confirm the 5"/127mm RHA penetration ability at ~4800ft/s at 60° obliquity for the steel penetrator version.
On a side note, T320E37/E60, can’t really use L-O for this one though, as the front portion of the penetrator is Tungsten Carbide. Only real difference physically E37 and E60 have to do with the fin assembly and sabot being slightly higher diameter than the bore on E60. From the documents I now have, the tungsten carbide versions of T320, could pen the same 5"/127mm @60° at ~4600ft/s. Oh yeah, another difference being E37 muzzle velocity was usually 5100ft/s, and E60 was 5200ft/s.
Welp, Gaijin denied the spall liner bug report, but of course they didn’t bother to check the sources that weren’t just new articles. Here’s a new one that makes it clear what the sources are coming from (and that a source titled “Canadian Army Trophy” is not, in fact, written by a Canadian, but a US Army Armor School historian): Community Bug Reporting System
The inner structure isn’t basic RHA / CHA / HHA as would be found in Armor arrays / external structure but a bonded layer of dual hardness steel which should spall significantly less (it uses a similar process(Krupp method) to Class B Special Treatment Steel which does not spall and is present in Naval, also similar properties are already conferred to ESR (Electro-Slag Remelting) steels present on tanks and so is not without precedent within War thunder) due to being designed to do so.
