Prediction of projectile penetration and perforation by finite cavity expansion method with the free-surface effect

With a target treated as the incompressible Tresca and Mohr-Coulomb material, by assuming that cavity expansion produces plastic-elastic and plastic-cracked-elastic response region, the decay function for the free-surface effect is constructed for metal and geological targets, respectively. The forcing function for oblique penetration and perforation is obtained by multiplying the forcing function derived on the basis of infinite target assumption with the decay function. Then the projectile is modeled with an explicit transient dynamic finite element code and the target is represented by the forcing function as the pressure boundary condition. This methodology eliminates discretizing the target as well as the need for a complex contact algorithm and is implemented in ABAQUS explicit solver via the user subroutine VDLOAD. It is found that the free-surface effect must be considered in terms of the projectile deformation, residual velocity, projectile trajectory, ricochet limits and critical reverse velocity. The numerical predictions are in good agreement with the available experimental data if the free-surface effect is taken into account.