Penetration of tungsten alloy rods into shallow-cavity steel targets

Abstract

This paper presents a combined numerical and experimental study on penetration of tungsten heavy alloy long rods (length-to-diameter ratio of 10) into thick RHA (rolled homogeneous armor) steel plates. The main objective of this study was to establish the effects of a shallow cavity at the front of the steel plate on the penetration process. Three experiments were performed at 1.5 km/s on target plates with a shallow-cavity of 19 mm diameter. These results were compared to existing penetration data obtained for flat plates over a range of 1.1–1.7 km/s. In the code simulations three target configurations were considered: a flat target surface without a cavity and two target plates with different cavity diameters (19 and 11.54 mm). The effect of the target’s free surface on the characteristic time that the penetrator takes to reach quasi-steady-state penetration into the target was investigated for three configurations. Based on the experimental results the effect of the shallow-cavity wall constraint on the penetration process was found to be insignificant. The code results matched the measured depths of penetration within the limits of the experimental accuracy for all configurations examined.