New insights into the damage assessment and energy dissipation weight mechanisms of ceramic/fiber laminated composites under ballistic impact

Abstract

Ceramics/composite laminated armor structures have become the mainstream in the design of bulletproof materials. To obtain systematic improvements in composite targets, it is essential to design the structure of each ceramic/fiber to ensure synergistic energy matching between them. However, the challenges of heavy workload and high-costs limit the experimental testing of these composites. In this report, B4C ceramics/ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) composite targets are studied and the impact of ceramic splicing size, impact position and size on the anti-elastic performance is predicted. Finite element analysis is used to comprehensively analyze critical obstacles of the failure damage, energy dissipation weight and ballistic mechanism of each material. Prediction results indicate that ceramics damage, fiber damage, and fiber delamination account for about 65%, 21%, and 14% of the total energy consumption, respectively. Square splicing and large size ceramics/fiber composites are found to have the best anti-elastic properties when the center position is impacted. This is ascribed to the transversal rapid stress wave propagation on the ceramic surface and the beneficial energy dissipation of the composite-backing arising from the longitudinal stress wave transfer of homogeneous panels. The results provide insights for identifying viable design methods for each structure, optimizing the matching of panels and backplanes, which reduces the number of experimental tests need to validate a given structure.