Simulation of Bullet Penetration using Finite Element Method

Present research work simulates the dynamics of a bullet and its penetration over a steel plate. The role of various parameters such as angle of impact, velocity of impact, angular velocity of bullet and mass of the bullet have been investigated numerically using finite element method. To start with, a configuration from literature has been taken and numerically investigated to establish the robust simulation technique based on explicit dynamics. The demonstrated estimated simulation result agrees to the reported experimental result adequately. Subsequently, various configurations of bullets such as ak47 7.62×39 bullet, 7.62×25 bullet and hollow point bullet have been taken for investigation. The influence of angle of impact has been examined by changing the angle of impact (0°-60°) with constant linear and angular speed. Subsequently, the linear and angular velocities, and density of the bullets have been varied with respect to angle on incidence and the corresponding results have been demonstrated to understand the most optimal performance of the bullet and bullet parameters. Moreover, the estimated penetration depths and analytical validation of kinetic energy for all configurations have been presented in the paper in detail.