Failure pattern in ceramic metallic target under ballistic impact

Abstract

The ballistic resistance and failure pattern of a bi-layer alumina 99.5% - aluminium alloy 1100-H12 target against steel 4340 ogival nosed projectile has been explored in the present experimental cum numerical study. In the experimental investigation, damage induced in the ceramic layer has been quantified in terms of number of cracks developed and failure zone dimensions. The resultant damage in the backing layer has been studied with variation in the bulge and perforation hole in the backing layer with the varying incidence velocity. The discussion of the experimental results has been further followed by three dimensional finite element computations using ABAQUS/Explicit finite code to investigate the behaviour of different types of bi-layer targets under multi-hit projectile impact. The JH-2 constitutive model has been used to reproduce the behaviour of alumina 99.5% and JC constitutive model has been used for steel 4340 and aluminium alloy 1100-H12. The total energy dissipation has been noted to be of lesser magnitude in case of sub-sequential impact in comparison to simultaneous impact of two projectiles. The distance between the impact points of two projectiles also effected the ballistic resistance of bi-layer target. The ballistic resistance of single tile ceramic front layer and four tile ceramic of equivalent area found to be dependent upon the boundary conditions provided to the target.

Keywords

• Ballistic resistance
• Bi-layer target
• Ceramic metal armour
• Multi-hit impact
• Finite element modelling