How does a shockwave pass through a tank to harm the people inside but someone standing behind a wall might not be unaffected by the shockwave? I think it has something to do with compressing air but wouldn’t it be easier for the energy to be redirected over or around a solid object rather than being transferred through?
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The shockwave can travel through the armor, and create metal shrapnel on the inside part of the armor. Those metal shrapnels are FAST and sharp. Which is dangerous to tank crew
That, if the blast is concentrated enough and powerful enough, but failed to penetrate the armor. Like directly hit by a high explosive shell
If the blast manage to penetrate the armor, it’s just regular overpressure, where everything kinda squeezed by the shockwave which can result in some ruptured organs
That, or the shockwave can toss the tank around abd the crew just hit their head on the hard jagged interior (gun breech, roof, hatch lever, etc)
Well keep in mind that anti-tank munitions are going to be designed to direct that energy into the tank through various means – shaped explosives for example work by directing a jet of molten metal into the tank’s armor which forces the pressure of the explosion inside the tank, while kinetic penetrators work by just hitting the armor very, very hard; the resulting shockwave will be partially inside. (Not to mention spalling from the armor inside the tank in either case which also/even more deadly.)
But also the tank is not airtight, so with a big enough explosion, even one not designed to penetrate armor, you will have the problem that the pressure wave gets inside the tank just because it has to go somewhere. The pressure can also just transfer through the walls
One part is spalling.
When you hit a stiff material hard enough on one side, the sound wave travels through and when it reaches the other side, the material wll break away and fly into the tank. So it is not the shockwave directy but the metal fragments that fly away from the tank interior.
Look at https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/jg2w7u/heres_a_great_example_of_how_old_tank_shells/#lightbox that is an experiment of a sphere hitting aluminium at high speed. The bulge on the bottom is quite close to detaching. Aluminium is quite soft and has less spalling risk compared to hard steel. A stiff material bends less than a softer material and shatters more easily into small pieces.
Face-hardened is when you make metal hard on one side but keep it softer. That makes one side hard and a projectile has a problem penetrating, but the other side is softer and can bend instead of shattering. It reduces the risk of spalling.
Spaced armour adds an air gap between multiple plates of armour, and spalling from the outer layer can be captured by the inner layer.
Spall liners are a soft but strong material you put on the inside to capture the spalling. A material like Kevlar is used; it works like a soft bullet-resistant vest.
Even just the pressure wave can be a problem. A typical wall is do not transfer a lot of the energy through because it is not that stiff but metal is. So when the metal move when the pressure wave hit is the other side of the metal move too and transfers the energy to the air. Compare how sound travels if you hit a typical wall versus a metal wall or door.