Composite materials are widely used in many engineering applications and are an attractive for armor design because of their increased high toughness, impact resistance, stiffness, and strength-to-weight ratios and the ability to tailor their designs to applications. In this paper, numerical simulation of impact on composites is being performed to predict ballistic limit velocities and evaluate the delamination behavior of different composite systems. The normal impact and penetration of blunt rigid projectile on laminated composite targets was developed to estimate the velocity for which the projectile has complete penetration, the ballistic limits and energy absorbed while perforating a given piece of armor. A non-linear, explicit, three dimensional finite element commercial code (ABAQUS) is used to simulate the response of armor targets at V50 impact velocities. The armor test panel is modeled as a multi-layered laminated plate with different composite systems, thickness, and stacking sequence. The three failure modes that represent the three stages of the penetration process namely transverse shear, tensile fiber breakage, and delamination are identified. The ballistic limit curves for different materials, thickness, and orientations are determined. The target interlaminar stress distributions along the thickness are graphically represented. Strain energy, Plastic dissipation and Kinetic dissipation energy curves for the whole model were obtained including thickness effects.
Using microprojectiles to study the ballistic limit of polymer thin films