Research on protective capability against armor piercing round of a reduced-scale steel tube model

Metallic tubes exhibit good capacity to eliminate stress waves and absorb kinetic energy under the action of impact load. To develop the capabilities of metallic tubes in the armor pierced-resistance field, a reduced-scale model consisted of a steel tube system was established. Some experiments of this model were performed using an armor-piercing device, which were carefully compared with those of double steel targets. The experimental results show that the steel tube system can greatly absorb the initial kinetic energy of the projectile body in the form of plastic bending, friction and collision, making the model superior to the double layer steel target in the field of armor pierced-resistance. Furthermore, some numerical simulations were conducted, in which the deformation processes and damage modes were shown to be in reasonable agreements with those in the experiments. This research lays a foundation for developing the high efficient armor pierced-resistance structures made up of metallic tubes.EI04477-4813