Smoothed particle hydrodynamics formulation for penetrating impacts on ballistic gelatine

•A mixed SPH-FE model for penetrating ballistic impacts on gelatine is proposed.•Experimental cases are reproduced involving velocities from 230 to 2229 m/s.•Symmetry properties are used to reduce the computational time.

A particle method is applied to the investigation of impact biomechanics in the case of penetrating ballistic. A three dimensional model is proposed using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method combined with Finite Elements (FE) method. The problem consists in the violent impact of a steel sphere on soft tissues, simulated by 20% ballistic gelatine (BG) material which is considered as a very interesting human tissue surrogate. Comparisons with experimental data are established to validate the proposed model. The results, in terms of penetrating curves, show very promising results. The use of particle methods appears to be an interesting way to model high speed loading, especially penetrating ballistic impact whose classical FE modelling can bring some important limitations in terms of mesh and element distortions.