Author(s)

F. Gálvez, S. Chocron, D. Cendón & V. Sánchez-Gálvez

Abstract

Ceramic metal armours are widely accepted as a very efficient solution for protection of lightweight armoured vehicles against kinetic energy projectiles. The high hardness of ceramics is responsible for eroding the projectiles while failure of the ceramic is progressing, while the backing material is supporting the ceramic. When the impact is oblique, failure of the ceramic is completely asymmetrical, and therefore the forces applied to the projectile are distributed non-symmetricaly making the projectile tumble after the impact. This behaviour is very efficient for add-on armours because a side impact on the main armour penetrates much less than a front impact. In this paper a numerical simulation of this effect is studied. The simulations have been performed using Autodyn 3D. A tungsten projectile impacting onto alumina backed with aluminium has been simulated. Different impact angles have been studied. The influence of the spinning of the projectile is also considered. The results show that the tumbling of the projectile only appears on ceramic faced armours, while in the case of impact onto a monolithic metallic material such as steel it does not appear. The results show also that tumbling increases with the impact angle. Keywords: ballistic impact, kinetic energy projectiles tumbling, ceramic armours, numerical simulation. 1 Introduction In this paper the influence of the spin velocity of a projectile impacting onto ceramic-metal armour is studied numerically. The variables studied are residual

Keywords

ballistic impact, kinetic energy projectiles tumbling, ceramic armours, numerical simulation.