Experimental and simulation investigations on perforation of titanium alloy plates against armor-piercing projectile at oblique impacts

Abstract

Titanium alloy is an advanced lightweight armor material, widely used in armored vehicles. Experimental and simulation investigations on perforation of titanium alloy plates impacted by armor-piercing projectiles were performed in this study. The critical ricochet angle and failure morphology of 6 mm, 8 mm, 10 mm and 12 mm titanium alloy plates subjected to projectiles were obtained. Simultaneously, Numerical simulations of the oblique perforation of titanium alloy plates were then performed on the high-performance computer using the explicit finite element code LS-DYNA, and the validity of the numerical model was verified by comparing with the experimental results. Furthermore, typical process of projectile oblique penetration into titanium alloy target plate was analyzed and the influence of factors such as inclination angle and thickness on the ballistic performance of titanium alloy plates were discussed. It is found that the residual velocity of the projectiles decreases with the increase of inclination angle of target, indicating that increasing the inclination angle of the target plate can significantly reduce the perforation performance of armor-piercing projectile. In addition, the critical ricochet angle of titanium alloy plate is sensitive to its thickness, and larger thickness can reduce the critical ricochet angle of the titanium alloy plate.