An analytical model for tumbling projectile perforation of thin aluminum plates

An analytical model for the perforation of thin aluminum targets by tumbling cylindrical projectiles was developed. The target material was considered to be rigid—perfectly plastic without strain hardening, while the projectile was treated as undeformable. The perforation process was experimentally found to consist of three stages: plugging, hole enlargement, and front petaling. Both conservation of energy and conservation of momentum laws were used for modeling the plugging stage, while a lower bound method was employed during the hole enlargement stage. The energy dissipated during the petaling stage consists of shearing fracture of the petal, localized plastic shear in a zone contiguous with the edges, the momentum of the petal and the bending energy of the petal. The analytical results provided generally good agreement with the corresponding experimental data in terms of the final velocity and final oblique angle of the projectile as well as the crater length of the target.