Abstract:
The penetration of the lead antimony-cored 7.62 mm × 51 mm bullet into a glass-
faced polyurethane elastomeric polymer resin has been studied. The resulting
craters in the resin contained elongated bullet core material that had a
significant amount of porosity. A simple linear viscoelastic model was applied
to AUTODYN-2D to describe the behaviour of the resin and numerical results of
the penetration mechanism and depth-of-penetration appeared to match
experimental observations well. Analysis of the high speed photography and a
numerical model of this bullet penetrating a viscoelastic polymer showed that
during the initial stages of penetration, the projectile is essentially turned
inside out. Furthermore, the shape of the cavity was defined by the elastic
relaxation of the polymer that led to compression of the core material. A weight
analysis of the penetrated materials showed that using a thicker tile of glass
resulted in better ballistic performance
