Ballistic penetration of steel plates

This paper presents a research programme in progress where the main objecti ve is to study the behaviour of Weldor 460 E steel plates impacted by blunt -nosed cylindrical projectiles in the lower ordnance velocity regime. A com pressed gas gun is used to carry out high-precision tests, and a digital hi gh-speed camera system is used to photograph the penetration process. A cou pled constitutive model of viscoplasticity and ductile damage is formulated and implemented into the non-linear finite element code LS-DYNA, and the m aterial constants for the target plate are determined. The proposed model i s applied in simulations of the plate penetration problem and the results a re compared with test data. Good agreement between the numerical simulation s and the experimental results is found for velocities well above the balli stic limit, while the ballistic limit itself is overestimated by approximat ely 10% in the numerical simulations. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All ri ghts reserved.