Foggy Windows: Predicting and Avoiding the Fleet’s Most Frustrating Failure

Delamination of transparent armor (TA) is one of the costliest and most frustrating failures facing the tactical vehicle community. When purchased, all TA appears equally pristine and has identical protective abilities, but some parts delaminate after only a few years while other parts last over a decade. Recent high delamination rates have resulted in large costs – a Warstopper study showed that transparent armor accounted for 20% of the maintenance cost for the HMMWV. One major advance in the last few years has been the Army-led development of an ‘Accelerated Life Test’ which consistently causes field relevant delamination in transparent armor parts. We present the development of a method to correlate test results with field life, thus allowing for life prediction and life cycle cost analysis. We demonstrate how the life prediction tool can be used to drive purchasing strategies, field use decisions, and vehicle design.