Ballistic Testing Simulation of Ultra-High Strength Steel Water Layer Sandwich Structure

Abstract

In designing materials to resist impact and penetrations, numerical simulation offers effective means to ascertain impact mechanism close to practical experimental procedures. This work presents penetration characteristics of water as an inter-layer between ultra-high strength steel sandwich structure. Residual velocities for both monolithic and sandwiched structures have been investigated. In the case of the monolithic structure, good agreement was found between experimental and simulation results in reducing projectile initial velocity of 854 m/s to obtained residual velocities of 487 m/s and 460 m/s respectively. Energy dissipation capability of water as an interlayer has also been investigated. Water, proving very effective in decreasing projectile velocity of 390 m/s to zero in a 2 mm steel-2 mm water – 2 mm steel sandwich system. Numerical simulation has been carried out using Ansys Explicit / Autodyn – a commercial software based on finite element method which is very effective in solving non-linear problems. Lagrange elements were used in the discretization of both the water and steel media.