Papers abstract:

This paper mainly reported a new type of ceramic composite armor with a back laminate of Ti6Al4V/UHMWPE/Ti6Al4V against the 12.7 mm armor piercing projectile at a velocity of 818 m/s. The mechanism of the whole ceramic composite armor against the projectile, and the function of each layer in the back laminates were systematically investigated around the experiments and numerical simulations. The results indicated that the outermost Ti6Al4V layer provided support for the UHMWPE layer, leading to the UHMWPE layer displaying the extremely high buffer performance during the impact process. Meanwhile, the middle UHMWPE layer also had an energy balance function between the first and outermost Ti6Al4V layers to cause small damage in the back laminate layers. Thus, this configuration contributed to absorb or dissipate the more energy of the impact projectile, successfully preventing the perforation of the projectile.

Product Overview:
This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to simulating ballistic impact on multi-layered ceramic armor using ABAQUS/Explicit. The model replicates the ISI paper’s experiments, enabling users to study energy dissipation, material failure, and optimal layer sequencing. Key simulation steps include:

• Creation of ceramic (Al₂O₃), Ti6Al4V, and UHMWPE layers with calibrated material models.
• Assignment of Johnson-Holmquist 2 (JH-2) for ceramics, Johnson-Cook for metals, and Hashin Damage for composites.
• Setup of frictional contact (µ = 0.2) and tie constraints between layers.
• Meshing refinement for impact zones and element deletion to capture failure.
• Analysis of velocity-time curves and damage contours to validate results.

In this tutorial, high-velocity projectile impact and armor response are simulated, according to data from the work of Liu et al.