Real-time prediction of projectile penetration to laminates by training machine learning models withfinite element solver as the trainer

Studies on ballistic penetration to laminates is complicated, but important for design effective protection of structures. Experimental means of study is expensive and can often be dangerous. Numerical simu-lation has been an excellent supplement, but the computation is time-consuming. Main aim of this thesis was to develop and test an effective tool for real-time prediction of projectile penetrations to laminates by training a neural network and a decision tree regression model. A large number of finite element models were developed;the residual velocities of projectiles fromfinite element simulations were used as the target data and processed to produce sufficient number of training samples. Study focused on steel 4340tpolyurea laminates with various configurations. Four different 3D shapes of the projectiles were modeled and used in the training. The trained neural network and decision tree model was tested using independently generated test samples using finite element models. The predicted projectile velocity values using the trained machine learning models are then compared with thefinite element simulation to verify the effectiveness of the models. Additionally, both models were trained using a published experimental data of projectile impacts to predict residual velocity of projectiles for the unseen samples. Performance of both the models was evaluated and compared. Models trained with Finite element simulation data samples were found capable to give more accurate predication, compared to the models trained with experimental data, becausefinite element modeling can generate much larger training set, and thus finite element solvers can serve as an excellent teacher. This study also showed that neural network model performs better with small experimental dataset compared to decision tree regression model.     

联合生成对抗网络和检测网络的SAR图像目标检测

针对合成孔径雷达图像目标检测中存在的样本获取困难且数量有限问题,提出了联合生成对抗网络和检测网络的学习模型。利用原始训练集对特别设计的超快区域卷积神经网络进行预训练;再通过基于注意力机制的深度学习生成对抗网络生成高质量合成样本,并输入检测网络进行预测;依据预测信息和概率等价类属标签分配策略为新生样本提供注释信息,并以一定占比对原始训练集进行扩充;利用扩充数据集对检测网络进行再训练。多组仿真实验证明,所提框架能够有效提升网络检测效率和性能。     

Round robin using the depth of penetration test method on an armour grade alumina

The depth of penetration (DOP) method is a well-known ballistic test method for characterisation and ranking of ceramic armour materials. The ceramic tile is bonded to a backing material of semi-infinite thickness, and the penetration depth of the projectile gives a measure of the performance of the ceramic. There is, however, an inherent variability in the results from this test method. In this work, the accuracy and the variability of the DOP method has been investigated in a round robin exercise. Six ballistic test centres took part in the exercise. A test protocol was developed, in which the threat type (projectile and impact conditions) and a procedure on how to prepare the targets were specified. The targets consisted of alumina tiles of two different thicknesses that were bonded to polycarbonate backing cubes. Two different 7.62 mm armour piercing projectiles were employed; one with a hard steel core and one with a tungsten carbide core. The projectiles and the other materials all came from single material batches in order to avoid batch-to-batch variations in material properties. These materials were distributed between the ballistic test centres. The test results of the different ballistic test facilities were collected and compared. There was not a lot of variation between the average DOP values obtained at each laboratory, but the variation in penetration depth between shots was high. The consequence of this variation may be less confidence in the test results, and a statistical method was used to evaluate the required number of tests that are sufficient to obtain an average result with high confidence. In most cases, the required number of tests is much higher than what is practically feasible. This work was conducted as part of the European Defence Agency-project CERAMBALL.     

Dynamic impact protective body armour: A comprehensive appraisal on panel engineering design and its prospective materials

Personal body armour is one of the most important pieces of equipment to protect human beings from various critical and fatal injuries. In today’s modern world, various organizations including law enforcement and security service have made it mandatory for their personnel to wear personal protection system while on field duty. However, the systems should comprise an improved ballistic performance, light-weighted, flexible as well as comfortable panel not only to be accepted with a wider range but also for effective performances of the consumer. Generally, the overall performances of the protective body armour could be affected by various parameters including armour design techniques, type of materials used and finishing of the panels. The current paper aims to critically review state-of-art for armour panel design techniques and the different perspective body armour materials. The paper starts by discussing the different body armour and its category. Later, the different states of technology for armour panel design (mostly for women), its problems and the possible solutions will be cited. Later, the commonly used different polymeric fibrous and the future possible advanced materials including carbon nanotube (CNT), Graphene CNT and shear thickening fluids (STFs) treated materials for developing the reinforced body armour panel will be discussed. The authors believe that this paper will enlighten useful guidelines and procedures about the different panel design techniques and current and promising future materials for researchers, designers, engineers and manufacturers working on the impact resistance body armour field.     

Problem of the reference height of the projectile trajectory as a reduced meteo-ballistic weighting factor

This paper deals with the issue of preparation of the aiming angles with the use of tabular firing tables and needed determination of the ballistic elements μ_B (ballistic wind w_B, w_xB, w_ZB, ballistic (virtual) temperature τ_B, ballistic density ρ_B) from the standardized met messages. The weighting factors are used for the calculation of ballistic elements μ_B that are incorporated into the trajectory calculations characteristics of weapon and ammunition. Two different methodologies practically used in the praxis are analysed and compared. For the comparison of the two methodologies the reference height of trajectory determined from the weighting factor functions is employed. On the basis of the analyses conducted, the potential for further increase in accuracy of these aiming angles preparation methods is pointed out.     

Critical interfaces in body armour systems

The ballistic performance, and behaviour, of an armour system is governed by two major sets of variables, geometrical and material. Of these, the consistency of performance, especially against small arms ammunition, will depend upon the consistency of the properties of the constituent materials. In a body armour system for example, fibre diameter, areal density of woven fabric, and bulk density of ceramic are examples of critical parameters and monitoring such parameters will form the backbone of associated quality control procedures. What is often overlooked, because it can fall into the User’s domain, are the interfaces that exist between the various products; the carrier, the Soft Armour Insert (SAI), and the one or two hard armour plates (HAP1 and HAP2). This is especially true if the various products are sourced from different suppliers.There are between 30 and 150 individual layers within a typical body armour system, and each of the interfaces between each of those layers will, in some way or another, contribute to the ballistic performance of the system. For example, consider the following interfaces/interlayers: (i) the frictional, sliding, inter-ply surfaces within a soft armour pack, and also between the pack and the carrier, (ii) the air-gaps that may develop within the soft armour pack, (iii) the interconnecting space between the soft armour pack and the hard armour plate, (iv) the nature of the interfaces between adjacent plies of a multiplied backing laminate, even in a highly compressed Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) variant, (v) the interlayer between the ceramic and its substrate, within a HAP, and (vi) the geometrical fit between two hard armour plates within a stacked body armour system. This paper will provide a User-friendly overview of all such interfaces and provide unique guidance as to their criticality and influence.     

Body armour – New materials,new systems

This is a very timely review of body armour materials and systems since new test standards are currently being written, or reviewed, and new, innovative products released. Of greatest importance, however, is the recent evolution, and maturity, of the Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene fibres enabling a completely new style of system to evolve – a stackable system of Hard Armour Plates. The science of body armour materials is quickly reviewed with emphasis upon current understanding of relevant energy-absorbing mechanisms in fibres, fabrics, polymeric laminates and ceramics. The trend in on-going developments in ballistic fibres is then reviewed, analysed and future projections offered. Weaknesses in some of the ceramic grades are highlighted as is the value of using cladding materials to improve the robustness, and multi-strike performance, of Hard Armour Plates. Finally, with the drive for lighter, and therefore smaller, soft armour systems for military personnel the challenges for armour designers are reported, and the importance of the relative size of the Hard Armour Plate to the Soft Armour Insert is strongly emphasised.     

A new look on the electric spark sensitivity of nitramines

Electric spark energy, E_ES, for a 50% probability of initiation of the 14 nitramines was determined using a measuring instrument in which the electrodes are in direct contact with the sample. Indirectly proportional relationships were established between the logarithm of the E_ES values and the length of the longest N–N bond in the nitramine molecule. This finding is compatible with the mechanism of the first step in the electro-reduction of the nitramine grouping. Directly proportional relationships were found to exist between the E_ES values and the crystal lattice free volumes, ΔV (i.e. an increase in the ΔV values increases the nitramine's resistance to electric sparks) but there were several nitramines with the opposite course of this relationship. Also a semilogarithic relationships between the E_ES values and a ratio of intrinsic volumes of molecule, V_int, to the ΔV values were described as well as ambiguous linear dependence between these energies and a sum of the positive and negative extremes of the molecular surface electrostatic potentials, V_S,Σ. Several nitramines studied (always the same ones) display roughly the same distribution in the coordinate systems of relationships with lengths of the longest N–N bonds, the V_int/ΔV ratio and the sum V_S,Σ as the independent variables. It was found that, typically, such relationships start from a single identical point, in effect a point corresponding to data for a structural unit from which the studied nitramines can be hypothetically generated, and/or are converging on another point, often the one corresponding to the data for HNIW. All the findings point to a fundamental influence of the intermolecular forces on reactivity of nitramines exposed to electric sparks.     

Determination of penetration depth at high velocity impact using finite element method and artificial neural network tools

Determination of ballistic performance of an armor solution is a complicated task and evolved significantly with the application of finite element methods(FEM) in this research field.The traditional armor design studies performed with FEM requires sophisticated procedures and intensive computational effort,therefore simpler and accurate numerical approaches are always worthwhile to decrease armor development time.This study aims to apply a hybrid method using FEM simulation and artificial neural network(ANN) analysis to approximate ballistic limit thickness for armor steels.To achieve this objective,a predictive model based on the artificial neural networks is developed to determine ballistic resistance of high hardness armor steels against 7.62 mm armor piercing ammunition.In this methodology,the FEM simulations are used to create training cases for Multilayer Perceptron(MLP) three layer networks.In order to validate FE simulation methodology,ballistic shot tests on 20 mm thickness target were performed according to standard Stanag 4569.Afterwards,the successfully trained ANN(s) is used to predict the ballistic limit thickness of 500 HB high hardness steel armor.Results show that even with limited number of data,FEM-ANN approach can be used to predict ballistic penetration depth with adequate accuracy.     

A comparison of the ballistic behaviour of conventionally sintered and additively manufactured alumina

Production of ceramic armour solutions on-demand/in-theatre would have significant logistical and military advantages. However, even assuming that such technologies could be successfully deployed in the field, such near net-shape manufacturing technology is relatively immature compared to conventional sintering of ceramics. In this study, the ballistic performance of a series of additively manufactured (AM)/rapidly-prototyped (RP) alumina tiles of 97.2% of the density of Sintox FA™ were investigated using both forward- and reverse-ballistic experiments. These experiments, undertaken with compressed gas-guns, employed the depth-of-penetration technique and flash X-ray as primary diagnostics to interrogate both efficiency of penetration and projectile-target interaction, respectively. The RP alumina was found to exhibit useful ballistic properties, successfully defeating steel-cored (AP) 7.62 × 39 mm BXN rounds at velocities of up-to c.a. 850 m/s, while exhibiting comparable failure modes to conventionally sintered armour-grade Sintox FA™. However, where a <1% by vol. Cu dopant was introduced into the RP material failure modes changed dramatically with performance dropping below that of conventionally sintered alumina. Overall, the results from both sets of experiments were complimentary and clearly indicated the potential of such RP materials to play an active role in provision of real-world body armour solutions provided quality control of the RP material can be maintained.     

Shock-induced reaction behaviors of functionally graded reactive material

In this paper, the ballistic impact experiments, including impact test chamber and impact double-spaced plates, were conducted to study the reaction behaviors of a novel functionally graded reactive material (FGRM), which was composed of polytetrafluoroethylene/aluminum (PTFE/Al) and PTFE/Al/bismuth trioxide (Bi₂O₃). The experiments showed that the impact direction of the FGRM had a significant effect on the reaction. With the same impact velocity, when the first impact material was PTFE/Al/Bi₂O₃, compared with first impact material PTFE/Al, the FGRM induced higher overpressure in the test chamber and larger damaged area of double-spaced plates. The theoretical model, which considered the shock wave generation and propagation, the effect of the shock wave on reaction efficiency, and penetration behaviors, was developed to analyze the reaction behaviors of the FGRM. The model predicted first impact material of the FGRM with a higher shock impedance was conducive to the reaction of reactive materials. The conclusion of this study provides significant information about the design and application of reactive materials.     

Visual-simulation region proposal and generative adversarial network based ground military target recognition

Ground military target recognition plays a crucial role in unmanned equipment and grasping the battlefield dynamics for military applications, but is disturbed by low-resolution and noisy-representation. In this paper, a recognition method, involving a novel visual attention mechanism-based Gabor region proposal sub-network (Gabor RPN) and improved refinement generative adversarial sub-network (GAN), is proposed. Novel central–peripheral rivalry 3D color Gabor filters are proposed to simulate retinal structures and taken as feature extraction convolutional kernels in low-level layer to improve the recognition accuracy and framework training efficiency in Gabor RPN. Improved refinement GAN is used to solve the problem of blurry target classification, involving a generator to directly generate large high-resolution images from small blurry ones and a discriminator to distinguish not only real images vs. fake images but also the class of targets. A special recognition dataset for ground military target, named Ground Military Target Dataset (GMTD), is constructed. Experiments performed on the GMTD dataset effectively demonstrate that our method can achieve better energy-saving and recognition results when low-resolution and noisy-representation targets are involved, thus ensuring this algorithm a good engineering application prospect.     

A bayesian optimisation methodology for the inverse derivation of viscoplasticity model constants in high strain-rate simulations

We present an inverse methodology for deriving viscoplasticity constitutive model parameters for use in explicit finite element simulations of dynamic processes using functional experiments, i.e., those which provide value beyond that of constitutive model development. The developed methodology utilises Bayesian optimisation to minimise the error between experimental measurements and numerical simulations performed in LS-DYNA. We demonstrate the optimisation methodology using high hardness armour steels across three types of experiments that induce a wide range of loading conditions: ballistic penetration, rod-on-anvil, and near-field blast deformation. By utilising such a broad range of conditions for the optimisation, the resulting constitutive model parameters are generalised, i.e., applicable across the range of loading conditions encompassed the by those experiments (e.g., stress states, plastic strain magnitudes, strain rates, etc.). Model constants identified using this methodology are demonstrated to provide a generalisable model with superior predictive accuracy than those derived from conventional mechanical characterisation experiments or optimised from a single experimental condition.     

Enhancement of wear and ballistic resistance of armour grade AA7075 aluminium alloy using friction stir processing

Industrial applications of aluminium and its alloys are restricted because of their poor tribological properties. Thermal spraying, laser surfacing, electron beam welding are the most widely used techniques to alter the surface morphology of base metal. Preliminary studies reveal that the coating and layering of aluminium alloys with ceramic particles enhance the ballistic resistance. Furthermore, among aluminium alloys,7075 aluminium alloy exhibits high strength which can be compared to that of steels and has profound applications in the designing of lightweight fortification structures and integrated protection systems. Having limitations such as poor bond integrity, formation of detrimental phases and interfacial reaction between reinforcement and substrate using fusion route to deposit hard particles paves the way to adopt friction stir processing for fabricating surface composites using different sizes of boron carbide particles as reinforcement on armour grade 7075 aluminium alloy as matrix in the present investigation. Wear and ballistic tests were carried out to assess the performance of friction stir processed AA7075 alloy. Significant improvement in wear resistance of friction stir processed surface composites is attributed to the change in wear mechanism from abrasion to adhesion. It has also been observed that the surface metal matrix composites have shown better ballistic resistance compared to the substrate AA7075 alloy. Addition of solid lubricant Mo S2 has reduced the depth of penetration of the projectile to half that of base metal AA7075 alloy. For the first time, the friction stir processing technique was successfully used to improve the wear and ballistic resistances of armour grade high strength AA7075 alloy.     

Analysis on the resistive force in penetration of a rigid projectile

According to the dimensionless formulae of DOP (depth of penetration) of a rigid projectile into different targets, the resistive force which a target exerts on the projectile during the penetration of rigid projectile is theoretically analyzed. In particular, the threshold V_c of impact velocity applicable for the assumption of constant resistive force is formulated through impulse analysis. The various values of V_c corresponding to different pairs of projectile-target are calculated, and the consistency of the relative test data and numerical results is observed.     

球头弹低速斜侵彻下薄板穿甲破坏机理研究

为探讨球头弹低速斜侵彻下靶板的破坏机理,通过系列弹道试验,对比分析了不同初始速度下弹体的变形,靶板的破坏模式,以及靶板的破口大小及形状；同时采用ANSYS/LS-DYNA对弹靶作用过程进行了数值模拟。结果表明：低速斜侵彻下靶板响应非完全对称,根据受力特征可将靶板划分为四个不同区域,即接触区,弯曲区,拉伸区和对称区；薄板的穿甲破坏可分为四个不同的阶段,即隆起变形,碟形变形,弯曲变形,弹体贯穿阶段；不同初始速度下靶板出现四种典型的穿甲破坏模式,随着初始速度的增加依次为隆起—碟形变形,隆起—碟形变形—拉弯撕裂破坏,隆起—碟形变形—拉弯剪切破坏,隆起—拉弯剪切破坏。斜侵彻下靶板破口形状为椭圆形,随着初始速度的增加,破口长径不断减小,形状由椭圆形向卵形过渡。     

A 17th-century Pikeman's Armour from Antwerp

Abstract

A recent re-examination of the arms and armour collection at the British Museum has led to the identification of a 17th-century pikeman's armour clearly associated with the city of Antwerp in modern Belgium, the only example of its kind. The three pieces: a pot, breastplate and backplate, are part of a collection bequeathed to the museum by William Burges in 1881. All three pieces can be dated to circa 1635 and are stamped with the arms of Antwerp, a stylised depiction of Antwerp castle between two hands derived from the blazon of the Margrave of Antwerp. The armour is indistinguishable from contemporary Dutch production and it is unclear whether it was made in Antwerp or whether the addition of the arms simply suggests a use in the city.     

旋转弹丸空气动力特性数值解法

为提高在弹道计算和弹丸设计中弹丸空气动力系数精度,采用隐式LU算法求解N S方程并考虑代数湍流模型,在旋转物面边界条件下计算弹丸的阻力、升力、俯仰力矩、滚转阻尼力矩、马格努斯力和力矩。通过对美国T388等弹丸的气动力系数计算并与弹道靶试验数据进行比较,以及对某榴弹的气动力计算结果在弹道计算中进行应用分析,表明用数值模拟得到的旋转弹丸空气动力系数好于以前用工程方法给出的结果。