Assessment of ballistic impact damage on aluminum and magnesium alloys against high velocity bullets by dynamic FE simulations

Abstract

Abstract The shape of the projectile seems to determine the effect of a ballistic impact and failure mechanism. In this study, the numerical analysis of ballistic impact with different projectile shapes, i.e., ogive, blunt, conical, and hemispherical is performed. The target is a circular sandwich plate with an outer diameter of 315 mm, which is composed of three layers with a thickness of 1 mm for each layer. These layers will be filled with different materials such as 1100-H12 aluminum alloy, ZK61m magnesium alloy, and 6061-T651 aluminum alloy. The target plate in the numerical analysis consists of two parts: the inner and outer zones. In the inner zone, the selected element size is set to fine, while in the outer zone, it is set to be coarser, and the size will increase along with the direction and the diameter of the circle. This numerical simulation uses the Johnson–Cook material model and is applied to ABAQUS/Explicit software. The simulation configurations are validated based on previous experiments by comparing the residual velocity values after the projectile has penetrated the target plate. The simulation results will obtain energy absorption values for each variation of the target plate. The energy absorption values are affected by stress and strain in radial, circumferential, axial, and shear deformation. The energy absorption value determines the strength of each variation of the target plate. Then the target plate will compare which arrangement is the strongest when receiving ballistic loads.