Determination of penetration depth at high velocity impact using finite element method and artificial neural network tools

Determination of ballistic performance of an armor solution is a complicated task and evolved significantly with the application of finite element methods (FEM) in this research field. The traditional armor design studies performed with FEM requires sophisticated procedures and intensive computational effort, therefore simpler and accurate numerical approaches are always worthwhile to decrease armor development time. This study aims to apply a hybrid method using FEM simulation and artificial neural network (ANN) analysis to approximate ballistic limit thickness for armor steels. To achieve this objective, a predictive model based on the artificial neural networks is developed to determine ballistic resistance of high hardness armor steels against 7.62 mm armor piercing ammunition. In this methodology, the FEM simulations are used to create training cases for Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) three layer networks. In order to validate FE simulation methodology, ballistic shot tests on 20 mm thickness target were performed according to standard Stanag 4569. Afterwards, the successfully trained ANN(s) is used to predict the ballistic limit thickness of 500 HB high hardness steel armor. Results show that even with limited number of data, FEM-ANN approach can be used to predict ballistic penetration depth with adequate accuracy.