A performance measure based on principal component analysis for ceramic armor integrity

Abstract

<p>Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been applied to thru-transmission ultrasound data taken on ceramic armor. PCA will help find and accentuate differences within the tile, making it easier to find differences. First, the thru-transmission ultrasound data was analyzed. As the ultrasound transducer moves along the surface of the tile, the signal from the sound wave is measured as it reaches the receiver, giving a time signal at each tile location. The information from this time signal is dissected into ten equal segments, and the maximum peak is measured within each segment, or gate. This gives ten measurements at each tile location that correspond to tile depth An image can be made for each of the ten gate measurements. PCA was applied to this data for all of the tile samples, and a performance measure was developed from the loading information. A performance measure was developed and tested on six samples from each of the panels. When these performance measures are compared to the results of the ballistics tests, it can be seen that the performance measure correlates well to the penetration velocities found from the ballistics tests.</p>