Fragmentation of armor piercing steel projectiles upon oblique perforation of steel plates

In this study, a constitutive strength and failure model for a steel core of a14.5 mm API projectile was developed. Dynamic response of a projectile steel core was described by the Johnson-Cook constitutive model combined with principal tensile stress spall model. In order to obtain the parameters required for numerical description of projectile core material behavior, a series of planar impact experiments was done. The parameters of the Johnson-Cook constitutive model were extracted by matching simulated and experimental velocity profiles of planar impact. A series of oblique ballistic experiments with x-ray monitoring was carried out to study the effect of obliquity angle and armor steel plate thickness on shattering behavior of the 14.5 mm API projectile. According to analysis of x-ray images the fragmentation level increases with both steel plate thickness and angle of inclination. The numerical modeling of the ballistic experiments was done using commercial finite element code, LS-DYNA. Dynamic response of high hardness (HH) armor steel was described using a modified Johnson-Cook strength and failure model. A series of simulations with various values of maximal principal tensile stress was run in order to capture the overall fracture behavior of the projectile's core. Reasonable agreement between simulated and x-ray failure pattern of projectile core has been observed.