123:. Wilson's technique, invented in 1877, was to pour molten steel onto a wrought iron plate, whilst Ellis' was to position the two plates close together and pour molten steel into the gap. In both cases, the plate formed was rolled down to about half of the original thickness. The steel front surface formed about one-third of the thickness of the plate.
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There had been several attempts to improve on iron with the addition of harder steels on the face, but these all failed for the same reason as the earlier laminate experiments; the ability for the armour to spread sideways into its softer backing allowed it to be penetrated more easily. In the case
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and the continual need for reliable protection with the increasing size in naval ordnance. Compound armour was a non-alloyed attempt to combine the benefits of two different metals—the hardness of steel with the toughness of iron—that would stand up to intense and repeated punishment in
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Various experiments were carried out in order to improve the armour, which included breaking up the armour into a laminate of several thinner layers of iron with wood between them, as well as various experiments with cast vs. wrought iron. In all of these experiments, simple blocks of wrought iron
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Compound armour was initially much better than either iron or steel plates, about a 25% improvement. Throughout the decade continuous improvements were made in techniques for manufacturing both compound armour and steel armour. Nevertheless by the end of the decade all-steel plates had decisively
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to absorb the shock of projectile impact. A typical installation consisted of several inches of equal measures of iron and wood (typically teak), with a combined thickness of up to 4ft in the most extreme cases.
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saw 20-inch-thick (510 mm) compound armour plate demolished by two shots of the 10-inch calibre guns which were to be fitted to the ship, whilst the same projectiles were shattered by 20 inches of
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low-carbon wrought iron plate. The front plate was intended to break up an incoming shell, whilst the rear plate would catch any splinters and hold the armour together if the brittle front plate shattered.
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to trial new armours. By that point conventional iron armours had to be 22 inches (560 mm) thick to stop contemporary naval artillery. The decisive winner was a new soft steel from the French firm of
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Steel plates positioned in front of iron plates had been tried unsuccessfully, for example in a trial by the
Italian Navy at Spezia in 1876. The problem of
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of steel facing, the problem was that the steel would not adhere well to the underlying iron, allowing it to shift or separate entirely.
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Compound armour was made from two different types of steel; a very hard but brittle high-carbon steel front plate backed by a more
215:(Fort Monroe, Virginia: Coast Artillery School Press, 1910), Issue 80, July-August 1906. At Google Books. Accessed 13 April 2012.
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edged ahead of compound armour, and the latter had become obsolete. Two major reasons for this were the introduction of forged
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found that there was little difference between the two types, although compound armour was subsequently ordered by the
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armour, which replaced nickel-steel in the mid-1890s and is still used today.
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in 1880 found compound armour superior to all-steel plates. An 1884 trial in
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197:. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 578–582.
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battle. By the end of the decade it had been rendered obsolete by
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Gene Slover's US Navy Pages - Naval
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in the 1880s, developed in response to the emergence of
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Armor and Ships: Journal of the United States
Artillery
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consistently proved to provide the best protection.
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181:Edwards, William Egerton (1911).
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16:Type of armour used on warships
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134:For instance, a trial by the
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220:Brown, David K. (2003).
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194:Encyclopædia Britannica
184:"Armour Plates"
164:Creusot steel plate.
39:armor-piercing shells
368:Armoured flight deck
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168:References
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113:Sheffield
399:Category
152:ironclad
35:warships
33:used on
377:History
324:Designs
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191:(ed.).
156:Lepanto
109:welding
101:elastic
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162:French
140:Gâvres
129:chrome
84:Spezia
44:nickel
31:armour
187:. In
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