Analysis and Prediction of Hole Penetrated in Thin Plates under Hypervelocity Impacts of Cylindrical Projectiles

The hole penetrated in thin metallic plates due to hypervelocity impacts of cylindrical projectiles was analyzed by experimental method. The projectile caused a hole-expanding effect when penetrating the target plate because of dynamic shear failure and extrusion. A new empirical model was presented to predict the perforation diameter in thin plates impacted by high-velocity cylindrical projectiles. The fitting coefficients resulted in a root-mean-square of 0.0641 and a correlation coefficient of 0.991. The errors between the predicted and the experimental values were less than 7.251%, and less than 4.705% for 93.333% cases of the dataset. The accuracy of the proposed model is much higher than that of Hill’s model. Compared with historical equations, the new model is more accurate and can well describe the variations of different parameters with the normalized penetrated hole. The model takes into account the strength of materials, which contributes to the excellent results. This paper could provide important theoretical support for the analysis of the perforation process and its mechanism.