Assessment of Three Finite Element Approaches for Modeling the Ballistic Impact Failure of Metal Plates

The ballistic impact was numerically modeled for AISI 450 steel struck by a 17.3 g ogive nose WC-Co projectile using Abaqus/Explicit. The model was validated using experimental results and data for different projectiles and metal targets. The Abaqus ductile-shear, local principal strain to fracture, and absorbed strain energy at failure criteria were investigated. Due to the highly dynamic nature of ballistic impacts, the absorbed strain energy approach posed serious challenges in estimating the effective deformation volume and yielded the largest critical plate thicknesses for through-thickness penetration (failure). In contrast, the principal strain criterion yielded the lowest critical thicknesses and provided the best agreement with experimental ballistic test data with errors between 0 and 30%. This better accuracy was due to early failure definition when the very first mesh at the target back side reached the strain to fracture, which compensated for the overall model overestimation. The ductile-shear criterion yielded intermediate results between those of the two comparative approaches. In contrast to the ductile-shear criterion, the principal strain criterion requires only basic data readily available for practically all materials. Therefore, it is a viable alternative for an initial assessment of the ballistic performance and pre-screening of a large number of new candidate materials as well as for supporting the development of novel armor systems.