Fhyujk

Though ceramic plates are harder than a math exam, and can practically obliterate projectiles, they are one-hit wonders. Self-repairing has been demonstrated for a composite of silicon carbide and aluminum oxide. The plate has to be substituted for the duration of the repairing process, but how am I supposed to quickly switch plates, sometimes mid-combat?

I need a way for the armor to:

• quickly


• reliably


• energy-efficiently

replace the plates, the structural components of the mechanism should:

• be sturdy


• lightweight


• and interfere with other activities (shooting and running) as little as possible

The plates are mainly around the torso (front and side) and the legs (front and side), since you only get shot in the back if you face away from combat, or if you let the enemy get behind you.

How should my armor replace its plates?

Note

If first thought of an arm that can reach out for and pick up tiles, then place a new one in the gaps, but Moravec's Paradox blocks the way!

Like sharks replace teeth.

The plates can be put on the armor in an overlapping scale pattern, with one plate visible, and another above it, protected by the overlapping scale. If a scale takes a hit it slides off, and the new scale automatically slides down into place. The broken scale can then be gathered and repaired, then put into the replacement slot.

Depending on the size of the scales you could end up with gaps if someone takes multiple hits in the same area, but if they are small enough then the gaps won't be too big.

Potentially you could have the armour made up of a rows and columns of smaller ceramic plates all around the body (looking almost like an array of pixel on the armour). Each column could be mounted on a rotating belt. As one plate is hit, the row rotates around the body of the wearer, moving the damaged plate to a 'recovery point', where the plate is removed, replaced with a new one and collected for repair.

There are two ways to go with this. The way it SOUNDS like you're asking for is for your powered armor to carry an entire second set of ceramic plates all the time can be swapped in and out while you're fighting. I think this is a Bad Idea and I wouldn't equip MY armored minions this way. You're basically handicapping your troops by adding all that extra weight which basically kills your "interfere with other activities (shooting and running) as little as possible" criteria the moment they put the armor on.

The way that I think makes sense is to have support units embedded with your infantry so that as armor gets too damaged to continue those guys fall back just enough to get out of the heat of battle and have their plates swapped out by a quick-change system, and then go back to fighting.

There's all kinds of ways you can do this depending on how rapidly you want to turn around an individual soldier. The quickest way is to have a 'combat medic' who's embedded with your squad who carries a couple extra sets of plates, so your troops can just fall back just out of the thick of the fighting, have the plates replaced using the medic's special toolkit, and be back in the fray in a few minutes.

A more efficient way if you're envisioning brigade-level rather than squad-level combat would be to swap entire squads in and out of combat. This is a VERY old way of doing things that goes all the way back to Greek warfare where pitched battle was a process of constantly cycling your tired guys at the front of the formation back so they can get a drink of water and rest up for a bit while some fresh troops hold the shieldwall against the Persians or the Gauls or whoever.

In this scenario your squad would fight as a unit till they'd taken sufficient damage that they couldn't maintain anymore and then a fresh squad waiting behind them would move up and the damaged squad would fall back to an APC or something out of range of the thickest fighting and have all their damaged plates replaced at once, along with whatever medical attention was required.

In fact, there's no particular reason you couldn't combine both approaches. That's how I'd do it, if it were MY armored minions.

Use a physical, arm mounted, ceramic shield. It can have layers of ceramic plates that are designed to be ejected after taking a hit.

The shield just needs to be thick enough to take the hits needed to get you into attack range. Then you can drop it for greater mobility on your attack.

When not in active combat, the shield can be stored on the back which will make it less cumbersom to carry and protect you from sneak attacks.

To go along with the scales idea, since you don't need back plates, make the plates easily attachable to whatever backing fabric is holding the armor. Then you can swap out a dead plate with a new one when it breaks. If you make it so that when scales break, the vast majority of the scale falls off, it's easier and faster to change. Carry the extra plates on your back to swap out, and/or keep a pouch or box around that has backups.

This kind of repair would interfere with movement, but it could also make for some really interesting tense scenarios. It would be like healing in a battle royale game, in the middle of a firefight. Also makes it possible to miss a scale repair and make yourself vulnerable.

Could also make modular armor, with different kinds and sizes of plates that can be hotswapped quickly. If a shield breaks, eject that module and load/attach a new one. This can make it harder to have backups available, but if they use a universal mounting mechanism, you can find all kinds of different modules in the world, depending on the setting.

Graft the plates on a carbon nanotube mesh behind it. Given fine enough it would keep the majority of the ceramic plates in place. A bit like gluing linen against a wooden shield. While the wood splinters the fabric holds it together far longer then it would without it.

Holding the plates together makes it easy to remove them as a whole. They could use a magnetic locking system. Easily removing them and slipping a new one in place. This of course isn't automated but down with the help of squad members.