Ballistic Response of Confined Ceramic/Metal Armor System Against Long Projectile

A numerical analysis has been performed to compare the ballistic performance of two distinct confined ceramic/metal armor system, alumina tiles backed by steel 4340 and alumina tiles backed by aluminum 5083 H116. A 76.2 mm long and 7.62 mm diameter cylindrical projectile with hemisphere nosed shape made of tungsten alloy and harden steel were hit normally with velocity 1550 m/s on both the target configuration. For these threats, under constant thickness, ceramic/metal configuration that defeated the projectile was studied through finite element simulation on ANSYS/LS DYNA. Depth of penetration of projectile in target, residual velocity of projectile, erode length of the projectile, ballistic limit were used to study the ballistic performance of target configurations. For alumina, Johnson Holmquist (JH-2) material model was used whereas for steel, tungsten and aluminum, Johnson Cook (JC) model was considered. For identical thickness, Alumina/Steel target showed better performance as compare to Alumina/Al target under tungsten projectile impact whereas on the basis of areal density, Alumina/Al performed better than Alumina/steel against steel projectile impact.