Blast resistance of a ceramic-metal armour subjected to air explosion: A parametric study

Nowadays, composite plates are widely used as high-strength structures to fabricate a dynamic loading-resistant armours. In this study, the shock load is applied by an explosion of spherical TNT charge at a specified distance from the circular composite plate. The composite plate contains a two-layer ceramic-metal armour and a poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA) target layer. The dynamic behavior of the composite armour has been investigated by measuring the transferred effective stress and maximum deflection into the target layer. For this purpose, the simulation of the blast loading upon the composite structure was performed by using the load-blast enhanced (LBE) procedure in Ls-Dyna software. The effect of main process parameters such as the thickness of layers, and scaled distance has been examined on the specific stiffness of the structure using response surface method. After validating the results by comparing with the experimental results, the optimal values for these parameters along with the regression equations for transferred effective stress and displacement to the target have been obtained. Finally, the optimal values of input parameters have been specified to achieve minimum transferred stress and displacement, simultaneously with reducing the weight of the structure.