Analysis And Optimization For The Ballistic Performance Of A Military Armored Sandwich Panel

With the development and changes of strategic situation and battlefield environment, higher and higher demand is set on military vehicle armor in recent wars. Much attention has been focused on the new kinds of armors which have a better defense function but don’t affect the vehicle’s maneuvering ability as well. The honeycomb core sandwich panel, which has an excellent energy absorption capacity and super light weightiness, shows a huge potential in the modern armor protection field.For this reason, the penetration problem of the honeycomb core sandwich panel is studied in this paper, using the finite element method. Firstly, the ballistic performance of the panels with three different kinds of honeycomb core is compared, and the parameters study is carried out mainly on the panel with the re-entrant honeycomb core, which behaves a negative Poisson’s ratio. The influence of parameters such as the face-sheet thickness, core thickness, core relative density, cell angle, cell size, cell wall thickness and bullet’s nose shape on the ballistic performance of the panel are systematic studied. Secondly, on the foundation of the orthogonal experimental design method and radial basis function surrogate model theory, the multi and single objective optimization are carried out respectively, based on the macroscopic parameters and mesoscopic parameters. According to the study, the conclusions are listed below:in the in-plane impact situation, the core plays the main role on energy absorbing, which is very different from the out-of-plane situation. The panel with re-entrant honeycomb core has the best ballistic performance among these three kinds of panels, and it is greatly affected by the structure parameters. An optimal design is obtained from the optimization process.The research and conclusions provide a guidance for the design of military armored sandwich panel.