Protection of Honeycomb Sandwich Armours Against the Ballistic Attacks

Abstract

Evolution of the ballistic threat has taken place, principally, in the contexts of general war, terrorism and crime. The threat has been developed to cause injury or damage to personal, land vehicles, ships, aircraft and structures. Inert projectiles will cause only localized damage to structural targets and therefore normally constitute a less potent threat to the survival of the structure than rounds which have high explosive contents. This paper describes the spectrum of ballistic threats on armoured structures. The results from FEM simulations of steel projectile penetrating sandwich honeycomb armours are discussed. The simulations are performed in 3D AUTODYN software [1]. Finally, the armours with composite systems and different materials subjected to blast loads will be discussed. The results show that the ceramic-faced armours cause reduction in projectile exit velocity by about 29.4 % and 39.6% for ceramic thicknesses 10 mm and 20 mm respectively. Also the result indicate that the honeycomb reduce the displacement due to blast loads by about 77.24%, only with 3.586 % increasing in the total weight of the armours.