Effect of volume fraction with high fiber and high resin composite targets on ballistic impact of rigid and deformable projectiles

Ballistic impact is a terminal ballistic phenomenon wherein a high-velocity projectile interacts with armour or protective systems, leading to material deformation, disintegration and perforation. This study investigates the ballistic impact response of KFRP and epoxy layered targets subjected to rigid and deformable projectile cores extracted from 7N31 armour-piercing (AP) ammunition. Four target–projectile configurations are considered, comprising KFRP with epoxy and epoxy with KFRP target arrangements impacted by arne steel and copper-plated steel (Cu–Steel) projectiles. The simulations are performed using the finite element method (FEM) in ANSYS/Autodyn. In this ballistic impact analysis, the ammunition core is modelled as a projectile impacting the target at a velocity of 600 m/s. Composite targets comprising 3, 5, and 7 layers are considered, with epoxy volume fractions of 10%, 20%, and 30% in KFRP with epoxy targets, as well as KFRP volume fractions of 10%, 20%, and 30% in epoxy with KFRP targets. For all simulation cases, the target plates are clamped (fixed) along their edges. The study shows that velocity attenuation is greater in high-KFRP targets as the number of layers increases at constant volume, compared with high-epoxy configurations. Thus the lowest residual velocities were 491.921 m/s for the Arne projectile and 285.649 m/s for the Cu–Steel projectile, both occurring in the high-KFRP configuration. Furthermore, the higher deformability of the projectile results in a larger back-face perforation diameter across all target configurations compared with the more rigid projectile.