BALLISTIC RESISTANCE OF MODERN LIGHTWEIGHT TARGETS AGAINST THEIR THREAT BY A MEDIUM CALIBER ARMOUR-PIERCING PROJECTILE

Abstract

The continuous development of anti-armor ammunition pays the attention of the designer to construct a new target consisting of lightweight materials such as ceramic and composites. The present work is concerned with the determination of ballistic resistance of ceramic/composite targets; each consists of a ceramic tile backed by a composite with finite thickness. An experimental program has been conducted to manufacture and characterize two types of composites with different thicknesses. respectively. These composites are fiberglass composite (CO) and kevlar-129 composite (K) and they are used to construct five ceramic/fiberglass-composite (Cer/CO) targets and another five ceramicikevlar-composite (Cer/K) targets. In each constructed target, the thickness of ceramic is constant, whereas the thickness of composite is changed from 2 to 10 mm with 2 mm increment. The constructed targets are ballistically tested using a medium caliber armor-piercing projectile with an impact velocity of 970 m/s. Due to the projectile impact into the constructed targets, a lot of splinters were produced and it was difficult to measure directly some of the projectile residual velocity using the velocity measuring system. Therefore, steel witness plates were used and the depth of projectile penetration into these plates was measured. A conversion equation, derived from experimental measurements of some residual velocities and numerical results of Autodyn-2D, was used to determine the residual velocity of projectile after perforating each ceramic/composite target. Samples of the obtained experimental results due to the impact of a medium caliber armor-piercing projectile into Cer/CO and Cer/K targets, respectively, are presented and discussed. Moreover, post-firing examinations of tested targets, witness plates and recovered projectiles are photographed for analyzing the test results.