Penetrating Resistance of the Laminated Composite with Stepwise Graded Foam

The present study focuses on the penetrating resistance of the laminated composite with stepwise graded foam target struck normally by conical-nosed projectiles. The dynamic cavity expansion theory is applied to formulate analytical model. Experimental results verify that this model on account of rigid-perfectly plastic-locking model is suitable for analyzing penetration depth of the projectile into a cellular target. The difference types of foam configurations, with identical areal density, were arranged according to the density of the respective foam. The penetrating process can be divided into 7 stages. Penetrating depth; the effect of mass density and the change of graded/layered core structures of the difference configurations are analyzed. It is found that composite target have a higher penetrating resistance than the monolithic foam material target of equal mass. The analytical results show great potential to reasonable structures for absorbing the dynamics energy and improving the overall penetrating resistance.