In this tutorial, the ballistic impact simulation of a steel bullet on a ceramic panel reinforced with green composite has been investigated using Abaqus. The bullet is modeled as a 3D solid part, the ceramic panel as a solid part, and the green composite reinforcement as a 3D shell part.

To model the steel bullet under high-speed deformation, the Johnson-Cook plasticity and damage model is applied. This model, based on Mises plasticity with strain rate and temperature dependency, is suitable for high-strain-rate behavior of metals and includes a built-in failure model in Abaqus/Explicit.

The ceramic panel is modeled using the Johnson-Holmquist (JH-2) constitutive model, which is well-suited for brittle materials like ceramics under impact. It progressively accumulates damage based on plastic strain.

For the green composite, which consists of multiple layers, the Hashin damage criterion is used. This method identifies four key damage initiation modes: fiber tension, fiber compression, matrix tension, and matrix compression—critical for evaluating failure in fiber-reinforced composites.

A dynamic explicit step is used with a defined time duration, appropriate for capturing the rapid response from ballistic impacts. A general contact algorithm is defined for all interactions, and a tie constraint is applied between the ceramic panel and composite layer to simulate bonding. The ceramic panel is fixed, and the initial velocity is applied to the bullet through the load section. A fine mesh is required for all components to ensure result accuracy. After the analysis, all results such as stress, strain, damage, crater, depth of penetration, force, … are available.