On the ballistic performance of Weldox steel plates impacted by blunt projectiles

We present a numerically based study concerning the perforation of high strength Weldox steel plates by blunt projectiles. Our study focuses on an ongoing discrepancy between experimental data for the ballistic limit velocities of these plates and their numerical simulation results. We show that this discrepancy can be eliminated by applying a proper failure model for these steels, which accounts for the failure strains at pure shear states. We also highlight several inherent difficulties in the numerical simulations of shear bands, arising from uncertainties in the estimated temperatures inside these narrow bands.