Hi everyone,
This is my first post, but I've been lurking for quite a while. I was just wondering what the best materials are for making NERA out of, disregarding the costs? It seems to me that for the middle, reactive layer, you need to consider both how quickly it expands when struck, and also how much it expands (i.e. maximise the expanded volume:unexpanded volume ratio). I have no idea what the best material for this is, I assume the fact that's its usually rubber is simply to keep the costs down.
Because the purpose of NERA is to both force more of the expanding metal plates into the path of the KEP/HEAT jet, and to snap it in half, it stands to reason the best material for said plates would be something hard and dense; staballoy for example. It increases the weight, but due to the way NERA increases the protection for a given thickness of metal, and because the armor is mostly air anyway, surely it would be more efficient overall to use fewer layers of staballoy than more layers of steel NERA. Again, presumably the main everyone uses steel is simply to keep the costs down. Or am I just completely wrong?
Also, another question; there was another post showing how some NERA systems have kevlar embedded in them, between the rubber and steel layers, with claims of up to 60% increased protection compared to regular NERA. How exactly does kevlar increase the efficiency of NERA so dramatically?