Experimental and Numerical Study of Concrete Targets under High Rate of Loading

In order to examine the ballistic resistance of plain concrete and reinforced concrete targets the perforation tests conducted in the laboratory, on square concrete targets size (450 mm x 450 mm x 80 mm) of plain concrete and reinforced concrete and to validate the experimentally obtained results Numerical simulations were carried out in Abaqus/Explicit finite element code. The unconfined target compressive strength of concrete was 48 MPa. A grid of steel bars having 8 mm diameter has been incorporated in reinforced concrete plates. The plates were subjected to normal impact of 0.5 kg ogive nosed hard steel cylindrical projectile having diameter of shaft 19 mm. The projectiles were accelerated by the laboratory pneumatic gun to velocities range between 53m/s to 220m/s. impact and residual velocities were measured with the help of Phantom-V411 high speed digital camera system. Ballistic limit of plain concrete and reinforced concrete targets had been obtained in the experiments as well as in the Numerical simulations in Finite element code Abaqus\explicit. Also calculated spalling and scabbing volume of plain and reinforced concrete targets after perforation experiments, the reinforcement in the concrete has been found to be effective in minimizing the scabbing and spalling of material. The ballistic limit of reinforced concrete target was experimentally found 16.9% higher than plain concrete target, However Numerical simulations predicted the ballistic limit of plain concrete target within 8% and that of reinforced concrete target within 3% deviation in comparison to experimentally obtained ballistic limits.