M829A3 vs Relikt | Abrams vs best T-90/T-80 Explosive Armor

The M829A3 is the second newest kinetic penetrator of the Abrams tank. According to the patents, it can be equipped with a steel tip that can help overcome heavy ERA. However, the patent is not exact technical documentation, so in the video we will check in practice the usefulness of such a design against the best ERA used in T-80BVM, T-90M tanks.

What's your opinion? Steel tip or not?

[velvetthundr]

This is just the first layer of the hull right that is penetrated? Not accounting the entire composite armor structure.

[Dastancool]

i really want to see ERA vs heat and see how effective it is or heat vs apfsds against ERA

[lake]

So judging by the pics, steel tip results in a smaller hole in the armor plate, meaning lesst spread of the projectile energy over the armor area. Had it been the whole armor package, it would have higher chance to pen.

[superliga]

Hard to tell, the part of the ERA that does most damage to the rod, is the plate flying away, imparting lots of stress on the tail-end of the penetrator. This is the greatest contributor to destabilize, yaw or even break the rod. Should be tested against an infite plate to make any real conclusions

[TornadoADV]

The steel tip seems like it's there to address edge cases we're not privy to and makes it hard to do a comparison test. (For those situations)

[nerdify]

It looks like the steel tip gets sheared off by the rear flyer plate of the ERA, which reduces the effect of that plate on the nose of the actual rod. Pretty interesting.

[Priehten]

How about you put in the description your pc config and how much time it took for this to render? Or may some additional info about implementation of the simulation itself.

[alanch]

In addition to what people are asking, I would do a further control shot with a penetrator of the exact length as the reference one but without the steel tip. The steel mass converted into extra length for the DU penetrator obscures the purpuse of the test which is to observe the specific gains of the steel tip vs ERA. The volume/mass conversion of the steel into DU would be valid if you wanted to estimate penetration into raw steel using a mathematical formula such as L-O but here I feel its counter productive.

And yes, also running this same test (without the steel mass conversion into extra DU) vs K5 would be appreciated.

[neurofiedyamato]

Perhaps the same test against. Thick steel block would be better so we can compare the depth of penetration.

[moistmike]

Me in bed with Tank Girl: "Hey! You said 'Just the tip!'"

[okakokakiev]

Wowc nice 👍. Good illustration to relikt

[alderlaketh]

Could you show me the mesh method you have used. I saw it so smooth that is better than my work.
Also, what is your system specs? Recently I saw that was 10850?

[xxkairzzxx]

From my understanding from papers i've read ERA is most effective when detonating around the midway point of the projectile ( as it causes the most damage to the dense core) so i would imagine the additional metal partially works to delay the ERA explosion so it doesnt damage the tungsten/ DU core as much

[wildwehraboo]

What program do you use to create these simulations? They look quite good and i would like to learb!

[okakokakiev]

Histerically the steel tip is supposed to help vs k5. Relict was supposed to beat randemn weapons and steel tips

[evanbrown]

Very interesting. One wonders if the type of steel used would have much influence on the results.

[tedarcher]

BTW, what if you start the explosion from one end of the plate, making it tumble? Would it make it more effevtive against long rods than just straight up?

[jadog]

You have lots of sims with apfsds against nera, but very few against layered steel and ceramic. Could you do a comparison of nera and ceramics?

[evanbrown]

Everyone who makes these videos says the patent says steel, however that patent US6662726B1 in 1999 makes no mention of steel. " The first portion is preferably tungsten-based while the second portion is preferably uranium-based."

There is a new follow-on Patent regarding a export round that uses a steel tip made popular by the under the turret ring blog. It could be that the Steel performs much better than the tungsten tip.

[tylrom]

The steel tip seems to be like an APC cap on ild school rounds. Giving a better angle of pen on impact.