CATEGORIZING BALLISTIC PERFORATION MECHANISMS OF DUCTILE METALLIC PLATES USING DIMENSIONLESS PARAMETERS

In this work, two dimensionless parameters were derived organically from impact mechanics equations to remove the need for empirical constants. These two dimensionless parameters effectively collapse the ballistic performance of ductile metal plates along two distinct loci, depending on the projectile geometry and the corresponding failure mode. Projectiles that initiate ductile hole enlargement via cavity expansion fall along a linear curve, while shear-plugging failure modes tend to fall along a cubic curve. Results were demonstrated for various projectiles of different calibers impacting aluminum and Ti-6Al- 4V alloys. The main advantage of the approach in this work is to drastically reduce the number of features for input into machine learning algorithms.