Failure analysis of plastic spherical shells impacted by a projectile

The main objective of the current work is to present an adequate model for the large deformation of a plastic spherical shell impacted by a projectile. On the basis of experiments, the deformation mode of a spherical shell was developed by introducing an isometric transformation of surface bending and the Perzyna–Symonds viscoplastic constitutive equations. By adopting a numerical method, the deformation of a spherical shell under local impact was investigated and the deformation mode was obtained. Finally, a comparison made between theoretical predictions, numerical results and experimental values indicated that the three groups of results were in better conformity with each other.