Ballistic protection performance of curved armor systems with or without debondings/delaminations

•Influence of pre-existing defect in an armor system on its ballistic performance.•Development of finite element models for the ballistic performance of armor systems.•Prediction of the ballistic limit and back face deformation of curved armor systems.

In order to discern how pre-existing defects such as single or multiple debondings/delaminations in a curved armor system may affect its ballistic protection performance, two-dimensional axial finite element models were generated using the commercial software ANSYS/Autodyn. The armor systems considered in this investigation are composed of boron carbide front component and Kevlar/epoxy backing component. They are assumed to be perfectly bonded at the interface without defects. The parametric study shows that for the cases considered, the maximum back face deformation of a curved armor system with or without defects is more sensitive to its curvature, material properties of the ceramic front component, and pre-existing defect size and location than the ballistic limit velocity. Additionally, both the ballistic limit velocity and maximum back face deformation are significantly affected by the backing component thickness, front/backing component thickness ratio and the number of delaminations.