On the Ballistic Resistance of Laminated Steel Targets. Experiments and Numerical Calculations

The residual velocity of a tungsten alloy penetrator impacting three laminated steel plates in contact without bonding is considered. The target thickness is kept constant, and various combinations of the individual plate thicknesses are investigated and compared to the monolithic case. At impact velocities near the ballistic limit, the residual velocity strongly depends on the ordering of the plates. The experimental results are compared with numerical simulations performed with different hydrocodes, the Lagrangian module of AUTODYN-2D (with and without the erosion processor) and CTH, which uses both Lagrangian and Eulerian features.