Ballistic Protection of Military Shelters from Mortar Fragmentation and Blast Effects using a Multi-layer Structure

In addition to its usage as a top attack ammunition in the battle field against troops, 120 mm mortar bomblet has been recently used in the terror attacks against military shelters and civil constructions. This research studies the protection of vehicle and personnel military shelters against mortar fragmentation warhead projectile and it's destroying effects. The mortar warhead threat combines both blast load and ballistic fragment penetration effects. Composite structure layers are proposed herein to be integrated with concertina walls to achieve full protection against the mortar projectile destroying effects. The current paper investigates the ability of the proposed layers to stop the mortar's fragments and to mitigate its blast load. The velocity and the mass distribution of the produced projectile fragments were estimated using Split-X software. Besides, the ability of the proposed protection layers to stop the fragments and mitigate the blast wave was evaluated using AUTODYN hydrocode. A static firing test was then performed to validate the theoretical results and verify the effectiveness of the proposed protection added layers. The current study showed that the proposed composite layers are sufficient to protect the military shelters from the mortar's destroying ballistic effects.