Experimental and numerical study on ballistic impact behavior of explosively-welded double-layered Weldox700E targets against ogival-nosed projectiles

In this work, explosive welding technique was used to fabricate 2 mm + 2 mm thick double layered Weldox700E steel targets. The bonding interface exhibited wave-shaped patterns without obvious micro-defects, grain refinement and grain elongation were observed. With specially designed shear specimen and tensile specimen, Ultimate stresses of the bonding interface under shear and tensile loadings were measured to be 526 MPa and 683 MPa, respectively. Ballistic impact tests against ogival-nosed projectiles were conducted on both explosively welded double-layered targets and double-layered contact targets. Ballistic limit velocities of the two target configurations were respectively 225.32 m/s and 203.98 m/s, with the former being 10.5 % higher than the latter. For both target configurations, localized bulging and petal-shaped cracking were observed; specially, welded bonding interface remains well bonded even after perforation of the projectile. Combining experimental results and numerical simulations, it was found that the explosively welded double-layered targets exhibited better ballistic performance than double-layered contact ones. The good welded bonding interface provides a better overall deformation capability for the explosively welded double-layered target, which is an important reason for the improved ballistic performance of the target. Although hardness tests show that there is a significant hardened layer in the explosively welded double-layered target, and the hardness value can reach up to 409.4 HV. However, the thin hardened layer cannot significantly improve the ballistic performance of the explosively welded double-layered target in the high-speed impact process of the projectile.