Different Composite Behaviours under Blast Loading

Landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices are known to be major threats for the coalition armies in operation. In order to protect the soldiers from their effects, armored vehicle manufacturers developed some blast protective solutions. However, these solutions often reduce the vehicles’ mobility and payload capacity because of their shape or weight. Fiber Metal Laminates (FML) look like promising light weight blast protective solutions as they associate low areal densities with good bending rigidity and a high number of impedance mismatches which tend to attenuate the shock wave propagation. In this paper, three FML composed of a back plate of armored steel, a middle composite panel named A, B or C and a thin front plate made of mild steel were subjected to a blast loading. The maximum dynamic deformation of each target was recorded during the blast test. A macroscopic post-mortem analysis exhibits three similar behaviors of the back plates but very different permanent deformation patterns of the composite panels. A CT-scan of each panel was then realized to explain these three patterns and, based on these analysis, some hypothesis were made to improve the blast resistance of the B and C panels.