Growth of hole in thin plates under hypervelocity impact of spherical projectiles

The paper presents an exhaustive analysis of experimental data on the strike of spherical projectile on thin metallic targets for prediction of hole-diameter in the target. The discrepancies in the test data have been highlighted. A non-dimensional model for the prediction of hole-diameter is presented, which incorporates the geometric and material properties of the target as well as the projectile and the angle of strike of the projectile. Most of the historical models perform well for one or two materials and for other materials their performance is far from satisfactory. The proposed model not only works well for these materials independently but also for all materials data of normal and oblique strike.The influence of the velocity of strike on the hole-diameter has been studied by extracting data sets with other parameters same. It is observed that most of the historical models either under-predict or over-predict the hole-diameter for some range of velocity, but the proposed model works well for the whole range of velocity.