Ballistic impact into composite sandwich structures
Much attention has been focused on damage caused by ballistic impact into composite material structures. Most often, the emphasis has been placed on the areas of delamination, and/or the reduction in residual strength of the impacted structure. While this is extremely important, there are other areas of emphasis equally important. It is very important to be able to determine whether a given ballistic impactor of known shape, mass and velocity will penetrate a given composite material structure, and if it does, what the residual velocity of the impactor will be. Methods of analysis have been developed which provide the means to predict the above utilizing only two penetration experiments for any given composite structural target. With the results of the two experiments, one can predict the penetration, non penetration and residual velocity of any other ballistic impactor. This provides a dramatic reduction in the amount of expensive testing required to study ballistic impact. It also provides the wherewithal to select the best material system and structural configuration to resist ballistic impact. Lastly it shows that the physics of ballistic impact and the penetration phenomena is modeled satisfactorily. These methods have been extended to sandwich composite structures herein.
- OSTI ID:
- 89826
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9409291--; ISBN 1-56676-220-0
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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