Numerical investigation of ballistic performance of SiC/TC4/UHMWPE composite armor against 7.62 mm AP projectile

With the development of weapons, monolithic armor is hard to resist these threats. Therefore, a SiC/TC4/ UHMWPE laminates multi-layered composite armor against 7.62 mm armor piercing projectile is proposed in this paper. To investigate the ballistic performance of the SiC/TC4/UHMWPE laminates composite structure, a finite element model (FEM) is created in LS-DYNA. Verification FEMs are carried out on the materials of the silicon carbide (SiC) material, Ti-6Al-4V (TC4) material and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fiber to verify the accuracy of these materials. Furthermore, it is shown that establishing FEM of SiC/ TC4/UHMWPE laminates structures can be reasonably implemented. Based on simulation results, SiC/TC4/ UHMWPE laminates composite structure has a better ballistic performance than other systems using only two of the above materials. In addition, results also reveal that the SiC plate is suitable for face-sheet to wear the weight and kinetic energy of the projectile, while TC4 plate can enhance the penetration resistance of SiC plate and UHMWPE laminates backplane can maintain the integrity of the composite structure to resist higher initial velocity impact, thus providing an innovative way to improve the ballistic performance under the high-velocity impacts.