simulations of armor penetration

[danfrodo]

This company, Sy Simulations, is showing of its structural simulation chops with a bunch of armor penetration videos like the one below.  These are cool in general, of course, but I like it even more because I use this same SW tool (Abaqus) every day, though my simulations are not this totally cool. 

Excellent representation of advanced material modeling using damage initiation and evolution leading to element failure.  Love it.

 

 

[Artkin]

So you think these simulations have merit? Ive seen plenty of these before by Sy. 

[danfrodo]

all depends on the material models. The material models are built from from pulling on a sample of the material and then backing out stress-strain from that.  So it all depends on how well the stress-strain behavior used in the model would match with the stress-strain behavior of the projectile and armor materials.  They are probably reasonably close.

These kind of models are used in car crash simulations simulations every day, though the test data for those models is very good, of course.  Automakers don't go crashing dozens of super expensive prototype cars into walls to see what happens.  They simulate and get something they are very confident in, then crash just to verify.  Simulation-driven-design, which is predictive, as opposed to old school build & test, which is reactive.