Evaluation of superior layer configuration of titanium Ti-6Al-4V and aluminium 2024-T3 against soft projectiles

The manuscript is focussed on the prediction of superior layer configuration on titanium and aluminium plates through numerical investigations using ABAQUS/Explicit finite element software. The target plate of titanium Ti-6Al-4V (Ti) and aluminium Al 2024-T3 (Al) were studied against 7.62 mm diameter soft lead core projectiles. The Johnson-Cook (JC) material model was employed to simulate the behaviour of the target as well as projectile material. The results thus predicted from the numerical simulations in terms of deformed profile, residual velocity and ballistic limit were compared with the experimental results available in literature. Overall, the results were found in good agreement with the experimental results. The simulations were performed on the target of 10, 12.7 and 15 mm thickness with three, five and ten layers in order to predict the superior layer configuration. In the case of Ti-6Al-4V, the difference in performance between three layers and monolithic was quite high, however the use of five or ten layers of equivalent thickness is not advisable as performance is reduced. For Al2024-T3, the performance of layer targets was quite similar to that of monolithic targets. It is also observed the resistance of TiTiAl target configuration found to be better as compared to AlTiTi target configuration. It is concluded that the Al plate as back layer has more efficiency for ballistic resistance of layered configuration. It is also concluded that with respect to thickness, the capacity of titanium target is approximately 1.5 times higher than aluminium target against given lead core projectile.