Failure behavior of projectile abrasion during high-speed penetration into concrete

The mass abrasion of projectile is an obvious failure phenomenon because of mass loss and nose blunting during the high-speed projectile deep penetration into concrete target. The thermal melting and cutting by aggregate on projectile outer surface are the main mechanisms of mass abrasion according to the experimental observation. In this paper, a coupled melting-cutting model is constructed to estimate mass abrasion and dynamic behavior of ogive-nose projectile during penetration. In this model, the abrasion volume of melting and cutting are obtained by two-dimensional heat conduction equation and a classic abrasive theory including a parameter that related to aggregate strength, respectively. Furthermore, the two mechanisms of mass abrasion interact with each other and are connected by the Johnson–Cook model. Finally, the penetration performance parameters, i.e., depth of penetration, variation of projectile shape and mass loss rate, can be obtained by the iteration calculation based on coupled abrasion model. The theoretical predictions agree well with the typical experimental data. Besides, the effects of the model parameters on the penetration performance are discussed.