Penetration of Long Rods into Steel and Glass Targets: Experiments and Computations

The penetration behavior of tungsten-alloy long-rod penetrators into steel and glass targets is investigated and contrasted at two impact velocities, 1.25 km/s and 1.70 km/s. Crater shapes as well as penetration depths and residual rod lengths were measured by means of a 600 kV flash X-ray system at different times during penetration. The wavecode CTH was used to numerically simulate the experiments. The computations are in very good agreement with the steel target experiments. However, since an appropriate constitutive model for ceramic-like materials is still in a formative stage, several different functional forms for the constitutive response of the glass were assumed in the study: elastic-plastic, Johnson-Holmquist, and Mohr-Coulomb. The numerical results are compared to the experimental data and some conclusions are drawn concerning the constitutive behavior of glass.