Effects of lateral edges toward penetration depths

The effects of lateral target edges toward the penetration depths of tungsten-alloy rod penetrators into steel targets are analyzed based on experimental and numerical results. An increase of penetration depths in the vicinity of target edges due to smaller confinement, thereby target resistance, has been observed earlier by Littlefield et al. (1997) and Anderson et al. (1998). However, we were able to decrease the distance between impact location and target edge in the experiments even further until the penetration depths reduce again due to a deflection of the projectile. The present paper focuses on simulation approaches modeling the experimental findings. Thereby insight into the physical phenomena as well as into the limitations of material models could be achieved. We compare our results to those by Littefield, Anderson, and co-workers.