Hard projectile perforation on the monolithic and segmented RC panels with a rear steel liner

• Projectile perforation test on monolithic and segmented RC/steel target was conducted.
• Whole ballistic range acceleration of projectile was recorded and validated.
• Impact resistances of single and multi-layered bare RC and RC/steel targets were discussed.
• An explicit dimensionless expression of terminal ballistic parameters was proposed and well validated.

Twenty-five shots of reduce-scaled projectiles perforation test on five configurations of monolithic and segmented RC panels with a rear steel liner were conducted. The impact resistances of layered bare RC and RC/steel composite targets were analyzed quantitatively based on the obtained striking and residual velocities of the projectiles, and the accuracy of the newly developed small-caliber accelerometer in recording the high-amplitude accelerations of the projectile is validated. The main conclusions are: (1) With the same overall thickness and projectile striking velocity, the stacked segmented targets have higher impact resistance than the spaced segmented targets. (2) For the spaced segmented targets with the same total thickness (i) the impact resistance of the monolithic RC plate is better than that of the segmented target, which is not dependent on the impact velocity as well as the rear steel liner is attached or not; (ii) the more the layers of the segmented target, the more inferiority of the segmented target has; (iii) while the number of the layers is fixed, e.g. double layers in the present test, the impact resistance of the segmented target is dependent on the order of the slabs, which is enhanced with the thickness of the later RC plate increasing. (3) An explicit dimensionless expression for predicting the terminal ballistic parameters of the projectile perforating the RC slab was proposed and well validated. (4) The newly proposed equivalent approach for predicting the ballistic limit of the projectile perforating RC/steel composite target was evaluated with the present tests.