A simple one-dimensional approach to modelling ceramic composite armour defeat

This work develops a simple set of models for the perforation of ceramic composite armour, which highlight the essential physical processes and illustrate approximately the dependency of ballistic resistance on physical properties and impact parameters. The major features of ceramic composite armour failure (viz. fracture conoid formation, dishing failure of thin backing plates, perforation of thick packing plates, and projectile erosion) are combined with a lumping of masses to treat material acceleration to produce simple models which allow computations on ceramic targets with both thin and thick metallic backings. Calculations are compared with a broad range of empirical data and are also used to discuss aspects of the interaction of penetrators with ceramic composite armours. The goos correlation of models with experiment demonstrates the usefulness of the present approach for studying ceramic composite armour defeat.