Possible application to tiled armour One issue with hexagonal or square armour tiles is that such simple shapes don't interlock sideways, as do jigsaw puzzle pieces. Whilst a little armour tile movement in the same direction as the bullet (normal to the armour plane) is useful in absorbing the kinetic energy of the bullet (and much better than the armour tile absorbing the same kinetic energy by shattering), on the other hand, sideways tile movement (tangential to the armour plane) leaves most unwelcome gaps in the armour in between separated tiles. So armour tiles shaped like jigsaw puzzle shapes (or some hexagonal variation such as these trispokedovetiles) could perform well in this application. TRISPOKEDOVETILES I've named the shape "Trispokedovetile" which is a contraction of "tri-spoke dovetailing tile". "tri-spoke" because the shape is similar to a 3-spoke motorcycle wheel with three bites taken out of it. "dovetailing" because the tiles interlock like a dovetail joint I've programmed a webpage using Javascript to display an animation which shows a range of different trispokedovetiles, each of which can be specified by a "CIRCLE" percentage, which is the ratio as a percent of two parameters - A "HEXAGON" parameter length - always nominally "100%" A "CIRCLE" parameter length - the animation varies this between 100% and 135%, though values up to 150% can be drawn. You can also use the webpage to specify a "CIRCLE" percentage and click to "Draw TRISPOKEDOVETILES" to generate an image of a tessellation of a particular shape of trispokedovetiles. Tutorial on how to create 3D trispokedovetile images.
Now to consider the important issue of interlocking trispokedovetiles against movement in the direction normal to the tiled plane, which for the application of tiled armour would be the normal to the armour surface, in the direction of a bullet's path. BILAYER TRISPOKEDOVETILES I propose that the unit armour tile be comprised of 2 joined trispokedovetiles with matching HEXAGON parameters but each with a different CIRCLE percentage. The reason for choosing C100 for the outer layer of the armour is because its 120 degree angle corners would be more robust. The reason for choosing C121 for the inner layer of the armour is because CIRCLE = 121% offers the largest percentage where the neck attaching the outer part rings is at least twice the thickness of the ring, attempting to balance the robustness of the ring parts to the robustness of the neck versus tensile stresses. Stacking and joining those together forms a bilayer trispokedovetile, "C100+C121". Drawing the 2 layers semi-transparently we can see how the bilayer trispokedovetiles would interlock in the normal to the plane. 2/3rds of the tiles can be slotted together, either the yellows and the blues or the yellows and the purples or the blues and the purples. However the final 1/3rd of the tiles would not simply slot in and would have be inserted by joining the two halves of the bilayer trispokedovetile in situ.
I have produced a Computer Aided Design (CAD) / Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) webpage to aid in the design and manufacture of trispokedovetiles, at this link. Trispokedovetiles: CNC code to cut tiles My webpage allows the manufacturing product designer to specify the shape and size of the trispokedovetiles and the webpage will generate a computer numerical control (CNC) program to control a CNC laser, waterjet, plasma, milling or router cutting machine.
BEWARE BAD LINKS ABOVE! I lost my website hosting in January. I was not "hacked" but the gcehosting administrator seems to have gone out of business and the hosting company he was using (godaddy) is serving various spurious adverts whenever anyone clicks one of my old links. I have got the following pages back on-line with a different hosting company now so try these links. LINKS Trispokedovetiles: Three-spoke dovetailing tiles by Peter Dow Trispokedovetiles: CNC code to cut tiles by Peter Dow Trispokedovetiles Gallery I can't edit my earlier posts to correct the old links, sorry. I've not done anything with this project since January.
