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An experimental and numerical study of ballistic impacts on steel plates at various temperatures (700 °C, 400 °C and room temperature) has been carried out. The motivation for this work is the blade-off event that may occur inside a jet engine turbine. However, as a first attempt to understand this complex loading process, a somewhat simpler approach is carried out in the present work. The material used in this study is the FV535 martensitic stainless steel, which is one of the most commonly used materials for turbine casings. Based on material test data, a Modified Johnson-Cook (MJC) model was calibrated for numerical simulations using the LS-DYNA explicit finite element code. To check the mesh size sensitivity, 2D axisymmetric finite element models with three different mesh sizes and configurations were used for the various temperatures. Two fixed meshes with 64 and 128 elements over the 2 mm thick plate and one mesh with 32 elements over the thickness with adaptive remeshing were used in the simulations. Both the formation of adiabatic shear bands in the perforation process and the modeling of the thermal softening effects at high temperatures have been found crucial in order to achieve good results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used a combined experimental and modeling approach to characterize and quantify the interaction among bullet, body armor, and human surrogate targets during the 10–1000 µs range that is crucial to evaluating the protective effectiveness of body armor against blunt injuries. Ballistic tests incorporating high-speed flash X-ray measurements were performed to acquire the deformations of bullets and body armor samples placed against ballistic clay and gelatin targets with images taken between 10 µs and 1 ms of the initial impact. Finite element models (FEMs) of bullet, armor, and gelatin and clay targets were developed with material parameters selected to best fit model calculations to the test measurements. FEMs of bullet and armor interactions were then assembled with a FEM of a human torso and FEMs of clay and gelatin blocks in the shape of a human torso to examine the effects of target material and geometry on the interaction. Test and simulation results revealed three distinct loading phases during the interaction. In the first phase, the bullet was significantly slowed in about 60 µs as it transferred a major portion of its energy into the body armor. In the second phase, fibers inside the armor were pulled toward the point of impact and kept on absorbing energy until about 100 µs after the initial impact when energy absorption reached its peak. In the third phase, the deformation on the armor's back face continued to grow and energies inside both armor and targets redistributed through wave propagation. The results indicated that armor deformation and energy absorption in the second and third phases were significantly affected by the material properties (density and stiffness) and geometrical characteristics (curvature and gap at the armor-target interface) of the targets. Valid surrogate targets for testing the ballistic resistance of the armor need to account for these factors and produce the same armor deformation and energy absorption as on a human torso until at least about 100 µs (maximum armor energy absorption) or more preferably 300 µs (maximum armor deformation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the influence of mesh sensitivity on the fracture predictions during penetration and perforation of hardened blunt-nose cylindrical steel projectiles in plates of Weldox 460E, Weldox 700E, and Weldox 900E steel has been studied. The main objective is to try to describe the experimentally obtained trend of a decrease in ballistic limit velocity with increased target strength when the plates are impacted by blunt projectiles. This behavior is due to the occurrence of highly localized shear bands as the target strength increases. The impact tests are analyzed using the explicit solver of a nonlinear finite element code. A thermoelastic-thermoviscoplastic constitutive model with coupled or uncoupled ductile damage was used in the simulations. It was found that the residual velocity continuously increases when the element size is decreased from 125 μm to 15μm in the shear zone, and that this increase is significantly stronger for impact velocities close to the ballistic limit. The ballistic limit decreases by up to 25% when the size of the element is decreased from 125 μm to 30 μm; the decrease being somewhat greater for the two steels with the highest strength. Even with the finest mesh, the experimental trend of a decreasing ballistic limit with increasing target strength was not predicted in the simulations, neither with coupled nor uncoupled damage. Nonlocal simulations based on smoothing of the damage and temperature fields, which are the two variables causing the softening, were carried out for the Weldox steels and a mesh size of 30 μm. These simulations indicate a reduction in the mesh sensitivity for both the coupled and uncoupled damage approaches when nonlocal averaging is employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]