Hypervelocity impact of tungsten cubes on spaced armour

The paper summarizes the experimental observations and simulation studies of damage potential of tungsten alloy cubes on relatively thin mild steel spaced armour target plates in the velocity regime 1300 – 4000 ms−1 using Two Stage Light Gas Gun technique. The cubes of size 9.5 mm and 12 mm having mass 15 g and 30 g respectively were made to impact normally on three target plates of size 300 mm × 300 mm of thickness 4, 4 and 10 mm at 100 mm distance apart. Flash radiography has been used to image the projectile-target interaction in the nitrogen environment at 300 mbar vacuum at room temperature. The results reveal clear perforation by 9.5 mm cube in all the three target plates up to impact velocity of about 2000 m/s. While 12 mm cube can perforate the spaced armour upto impact velocity of 4000 m/s. This shows that 9.5mm tungsten alloy cube is not effective beyond 2000 m/s while 12 mm tungsten alloy cube can defeat the spaced armour upto 4000 m/s. The simulation studies have been carried out using Autodyn 3D nonlinear code using Lagrange solver at velocities 1200 – 4000 m/s. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental findings.