Boron carbide ceramics have the characteristics of high melting point, high hardness, high strength and low density. As a kind of special ceramics with excellent performance, boron carbide has become the preferred choice of armor ceramics in the lightweight armor with weight reduction and protection capability. For ballistic behavior of armor ceramic materials, the kinetic energy of projectiles is usually consumed by the damage and fracture of ceramic materials. Under ballistic impact loading, the armor ceramics are always in complicated stress state, and also affected by the wave stress propagation, the whole damage and fracture of it is a complicated process. The ballistic performance of armor ceramics depend not only on the physical and mechanical properties of the material itself, but also on the boundary conditions and projectile materials and morphology. Therefore, in order to study the ballistic performance of armor ceramics, besides its physical and mechanical properties, we should also pay more attention to study their failure behavior under different loads. In this paper, on the base of ballistic resistance mechanism of armor ceramics, the research of mechanical properties and failure behavior for boron carbide ceramics are reviewed comprehensively. The hardness, toughness and strength of boron carbide ceramics for different sintering methods are analyzed. The fracture mechanism and amorphous behavior of boron carbide ceramics under different impact loads are discussed, and the damage constitutive model of ceramics are summarized. © 2020, Materials Review Magazine. All right reserved.
