Dynamic spherical cavity expansion analysis of rate-dependent concrete material with scale effect

•The size effect incorporated Drucker-Prager Cap plasticity model is addressed to describe the rate dependent concrete material.•Decreasing the projectile diameter will cause an increase to static resistance for dynamic impact response.•Strain rate effect resistance decreases as cavity wall scale increases.•High speed penetration will cause the occurrence of concrete saturated region resulting in a decrease of the penetration resistance.

In this paper, dynamic spherical cavity expansion model is developed for rate-dependent concrete material described by modified Drucker-Prager Cap plasticity model incorporated with size effect. Penetration resistance components are computed accordingly with static resistance dependent on projectile diameter scale. Saturated region is introduced to investigate the response of concrete target under high impacting velocity. The validation of the proposed model is conducted by modelling a rigid projectile with full-scale and 1/10-scale diameter penetrating a semi-infinite concrete target. Depth of penetration numerically obtained is also compared with some widely recognized empirical penetration formulae, and better agreement is achieved by the proposed model for penetration tests with various striking velocities.