An Investigation into the Penetration Behavior of Monolithic and Multi-layered Metallic Targets Subjected to the Projectile Impact

In the current study, an experimental study and modeling of the penetration behavior of single-layered and multi-layered targets made of either aluminum alloy or mild steel or a combination of these materials impacted by a spherical projectile were introduced. For conducting 66 experiments, eight different layering configurations consist of monolithic aluminum and steel plates with the thickness of 2 mm and 3mm, double-layered aluminum and steel plates with a total thickness of 2 mm, triple-layered aluminum, and steel plates with the total thickness of 3 mm, and triple mixed layered plates of Aluminum-Steel-Aluminum and Steel-Aluminum-Steel configurations with the total thickness of 3 mm were considered under various impact velocities of 42 to 158 m/s. The impact velocity and maximum permanent deflection of specimens were measured in all experiments. In the numerical modeling section, the group method of data handling neural network was used to present a mathematical model based on dimensionless numbers to predict the maximum permanent deflection of monolithic and multi-layered metallic plates under the rigid projectile impact. To increase the prediction capability of the proposed neural network for this process, the experimental data were divided into two training and prediction sets. The results showed that good agreement between the proposed model and the corresponding experimental results is obtained and 94% of data points are within the ±10% error range.