Instrumented Penetration of Metal Alloys During High-Velocity Impacts

A methodology is presented for characterizing the failure behavior of metallic targets due to high-velocity and hypervelocity impacts. Time-resolved sub-scale terminal ballistic experiments were performed at approximately 1.2 km/s to assess the feasibility of using high-speed optical imaging, photon Doppler velocimetry, and high-speed 3D digital image correlation for measuring back face deformation. Spherical copper impactors were fired into aluminum alloy targets with thickness equal to one half the impactor diameter. The approach has implications for determining the susceptibility of metallic targets to different failure modes including bulk plastic deformation resulting in tensile failure, cratering, plugging, spallation and adiabatic shear band formation. Results will be used to assist in validation of large-scale computational models used to model ballistic impact.