Impact fracture analysis enhanced by contact of peridynamic and finite element formulations

• Using peridynamic formulation, the impact of a rigid projectile into a rigid wall is studied.
• The perforation of a steel plate by a blunt-nosed cylindrical rigid projectile is discussed.
• For the projectile with an initial velocity beyond the ballistic limit velocity, the comparison work is conducted.
• The overall physical behavior of the perforation process is numerically observed.

A new contact algorithm is implemented for the interaction of peridynamic regime and finite elements for the effective impact fracture analysis. The region that might experience fracture is modeled using peridynamics that is a reformulated theory of continuum mechanics while the impact projectile is modeled by three-dimensional finite elements in order to exploit mutual advantages of the formulations. An inverse isoparametric mapping technique and a node-to-surface contact algorithm are customized and implemented, and a penalty method enforcing displacement constraints is then incorporated for the transient analyses using the explicit time integration. The proposed numerical technique is applied to several examples for verification and validation. Starting with examining the material behavior of a peridynamic bar, rigid-body impact is then studied for the verification of contact-impact procedure. The ballistic perforation of an impactor through a steel plate is investigated numerically. Good agreement between numerical simulations and the analytical model is observed in the analysis of the residual velocities. The physical process of perforation is captured accurately in the simulations using the proposed numerical methodology.