Wang Lai, as the head of the Ordnance Division, this kind of information comes out of his mouth, and he can say it very clearly without special preparation:

"The armor used by our navy can be roughly divided into five generations.

"The first generation of armor was wrought ironclad, and the battleships at that time were also collectively referred to as ironclad ships.

"The second-generation armor is a composite armor formed by splicing steel on the outside and wrought iron on the inside.

"The third generation of armor is made by adding nickel to the steel to form a tough alloy steel armor.

"The fourth-generation armor is based on the third-generation armor and uses the technology of carburizing and hardening the surface.

"In the manufacturing process, carbon is evenly infiltrated into the surface of the armor, increasing the carbon content of the surface layer of the armor steel, and making the surface of the armor harder.

"At the same time, the carbon content of the inner layer of the armor remains the same, so it can maintain the original toughness, strengthen the defense capability and maintain the installation performance.

"The fifth-generation armor, on the basis of the fourth-generation armor, adds chromium to form nickel-chromium alloy steel, so that the armor performance is improved again.

At the same time, the carburizing treatment method has also been changed from buried carbon to carbon blowing, and the overall performance is more superior.

"Nowadays, when we talk about case-hardened armor, we usually refer to the fifth-generation armor, and the full name is 'nickel-chromium alloy steel armor with carburizing and hardening treatment on the surface'.

"Now the 160 mm thick fifth-generation armor is equivalent to the 430 mm thick wrought iron armor.

"Most importantly, the case-hardened layer of the armor is able to shatter the tip of a conventional shell, allowing the shell to explode directly on the outside, or simply fail.

"At the beginning of the war, our fifth-generation armor had just been applied, and the armored cruisers built in the Great Qin Sea were all 160 mm thick fifth-generation armor.

"After the start of the war, it was found that the shells of the 300 mm caliber main guns of the Xiyi battleship could not penetrate our armored cruisers.

"On the contrary, a large number of Xiyi cruisers and a large number of medium-caliber naval guns can often break the surface of our warships, and we have to run back to the port to repair them.

"So the capital ship designed at that time was equipped with 240 mm thick fifth-generation armor at most, and it was not necessary to be thicker, and the enemy would not be able to penetrate it anyway.

"However, later we and Xiyi separately summed up the combat experience and invented the 'cap-piercing bullet', and the armor advantage was greatly reduced.

"Now the latest capital ships, the armor has been piled up to a thickness of 300 mm, otherwise it is a bit dangerous to exchange fire at close range."

Zhu Jingyuan listened to Wang Lai's introduction in his ear, and compared the relevant memories of his previous life in his heart, he had a general judgment on the armor technology of the Ming Dynasty.

The current fifth-generation armor steel of the Ming Dynasty is almost the standard armor of the dreadnought era.

The full name is that long list, commonly known as Krupp steel.

Because the German Krupp company was the first to add chromium to nickel alloy steel and applied the carbon blowing method, it is the owner of this stage patent.

After buying patents in other countries, they have made different optimizations according to their own conditions.

These armor steels were used until the end of World War I.

The development of armor technology after the First World War was mainly based on Krupp steel, with the addition of molybdenum and copper.

Continue to improve strength, toughness, and corrosion resistance.

According to the current generational division standard of the Ming Dynasty, these can be regarded as the sixth generation of armor.

This armor was used until the end of World War II.

The last battleships on Earth basically used this type of armor.

The development of armor technology after World War II gradually penetrated into the control of trace elements, as well as more advanced production processes.

The end result is the support structure and pressure-resistant shell of the nuclear submarine, as well as the flight deck of a modern aircraft carrier.

Zhu Jingyuan, a keyboard politician and amateur military fan, does not understand the specific production process of armor steel, but only knows the general direction and remembers several main components.

With the current level of technology in the Ming Dynasty, those new armor formulas that appeared after World War I should be able to start research and exploration.

There is no upper limit to the pursuit of naval armor performance, and it is not the limit that the enemy's capital ship cannot penetrate its own cruiser armor.

The better armor defense per unit thickness, can further reduce the armor thickness and weight while maintaining the original defense power.

This allows secondary ships to have better defense, and capital ships to gain greater speed.

So Zhu Jingyuan nodded lightly, affirmed Wang Lai's introduction, and directly put forward his own requirements:

"Now it's time to start experimenting with new alloy recipes, which can be regarded as the exploration of the sixth generation of armor.

"There should already be manganese in the current armor alloy materials, right?

"If not, add it, about 3 per 1,000.

"Then try to add molybdenum, the proportion is about 6 thousandths.

"Finally, there's copper, about two thousandths of a percentage.

"If the steel is made of silicon-containing deoxidizers, the silicon content is controlled at about 3 parts per thousand.

"Anyway, let's see if it works well."

Wang Lai and the left-behind craftsmen of the Armored Research and Development Bureau carefully recorded Zhu Jingyuan's requirements and formulas, and prepared to let people test them immediately.

They're obviously looking forward to it.

Materials science is a bit chaotic a lot of the time.

It is difficult to predict what the effect of adding new ingredients to the original material will be without directly experimenting with the actual ingredients.

Most of the materials with excellent performance, in addition to the continuous piling of money and the number of experiments, there are many accidents produced in experiments.

The groping for new armor materials is, in theory, the most important task of the Panzer Bureau.

Daily exploration is also done all the time, and people in the materials department are testing various solutions all day long.

However, it has been more than ten years and there has been little substantial progress, and the process can only be continuously optimized on the original formula.

Zhu Jingyuan has now specially proposed several new material formulas, that is, adding a few more items to the daily test list, which will not affect the daily work of the Armored Research and Development Bureau.

If the formula provided by Zhu Jingyuan has tested obvious excellent performance, it will be an absolute surprise.

Then the follow-up research and development work will immediately move closer to the refinement of these formulas, and the priority of other things will be reduced.

Since Zhu Jingyuan participated in the affairs of the Ministry of Industry, the ideas he put forward have often had very good results, and the most typical representative is aircraft design.

If Zhu Jingyuan can still come up with very effective ideas in materials science, which is full of chaos, it will be even more surprising than other normal researches.

Although I don't know if these materials have any effect, Wang Lai, who is the director of the Ship Division, and the craftsmen of the Armored Research and Development Bureau are still full of expectations.

Zhu Jingyuan's mentality is relatively flat, and he doesn't expect to have very good results soon.

Because the formula is likely to require process cooperation, I am not sure whether Daming's process level can achieve the role of those formulas, so I didn't say too much.