Abstract
An original simplified finite element model is proposed to simulate the effects of non-penetrating ballistic impacts causing the so-called bullet splash phenomenon (complete bullet fragmentation), while no fragmentation is caused to the target. The model is based on the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian formulation (ALE) and it simulates the impact as a fluid-structure interaction. The bullet splash phenomenon has been tested by experimental analyses of AISI 304L plates impacted by 9x21 FMJ (full metal jacket) bullets. The model has been developed with the aim of creating a simplified approach to be used in the industry and forensic sciences to simulate the non-penetrating interaction of soft impactors with hard targets. Comparisons between evidence and simulation results lead to the conclusion that the proposed approach can be used in a conservative way to estimate both local and global effects of bullet-splash phenomena.
Highlights
M any applications, in aerospace and defense industry, involve the assessment of the structural consequences of impacts such as bird strike (Heimbs, 2012 [1]), hail strike (Anghileri et al, 2005 [2]), or ballistic impacts against structures, with the aim of optimizing their response in terms of protective capabilities
An original simplified finite element model is proposed to simulate the effects of non-penetrating ballistic impacts causing the so-called bullet splash phenomenon, while no fragmentation is caused to the target
The plastic strain field collected by the real samples have been calculated from the micro-hardness profiles of the samples thanks to an empirical linear correlation between plastic strain and microhardness established by Qiao et al [13] for AISI 304L: HV304L 382 p 152 (3)
Summary
M any applications, in aerospace and defense industry, involve the assessment of the structural consequences of impacts such as bird strike (Heimbs, 2012 [1]), hail strike (Anghileri et al, 2005 [2]), or ballistic impacts against structures, with the aim of optimizing their response in terms of protective capabilities. To implement these hypotheses into a simulation that can be of practical use in the industry, we chose to model the interaction between impactor and target using the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation (ALE) [10], which, during the last two decades, has been successfully used for several industrial applications to investigate the mechanical interaction between soft and hard continua like fluid-structure interaction, bird-strike [11], and impacts involving soft materials [12], guaranteeing strong stability of the calculation even in case of extremely large deformation fields This technique, despite some intrinsic and well-known drawbacks [1], minimizes the risk of local instabilities, which are negative inconveniences when encountered in the industry, where engineers frequently need to process several batch analyses with multiple load cases and sensitivity tests on tight deadlines.
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