Projectile fragmentation and debris cloud formation behaviour of wavy plates in hypervelocity impact

•Four surface wave profiles were investigated for hypervelocity impact shielding.•Wave profiles caused novel projectile fragmentation and debris cloud shape.•Wavy plates outperform flat plate in terms of energy dissipation.•Simple design variations allow wavy plates to perform considerably better. Continuously increasing micro meteorite and orbital debris (MMOD) in space poses a threat to any manned or unmanned space vehicle with increasing probability of damaging object impact. To address the sufficient level of protection of space vessels, many Whipple shield configurations has been studied for over half a century. Bumper plate of Whipple shields studied in existing literature are flat surfaced plates. In contrast to earlier studies, this paper investigates the reaction of bumper plates with wavy surfaces against hypervelocity impact by analysing how they contribute to projectile fragmentation, formation of debris cloud, and how they dissipate the impact energy. Aluminium plates with four different surface wave profiles (WPs) were numerically investigated under hypervelocity impact conditions to assess their performance on disintegration of the impacting projectile. Fragmentation patterns of spherical aluminium projectile and debris cloud generated by projectile-wavy plate couples were examined and compared with the equivalents observed in flat-surfaced plate impact. A hybrid Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) combined with finite element modelling (FEM) approach was adopted using ANSYS software to simulate hypervelocity impact phenomenon at 3 km/s. Results of the numerical work carried out in this study revealed the distinctive debris cloud generation that has never been reported before in the existing literature. Furthermore, compared to the flat plate, wavy plates are found to be more effective in decreasing the impact energy.