A comparison of whipple shield hypervelocity impact tests to penetration predictors
- Paper ID
IAF-91-281
- author
- company
NASA Structures Division, Marshall Space Flight Center
- country
U.S.A.
- year
1991
- abstract
The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical model to convert ballistic limit curves obtained from flat plate projectile experiments to ballistic limit curves based on equivalent diameter spheres. Results from a test program involving flat plate projectiles conducted at Sandia National Laboratories are compared against the predicted performance of equivalent spherical projectiles as determined from the Wilkinson and Cour-Palais penetration equations. The developed method demonstrates good correlation of the ballistic limit of the shield concept for the flat plate projectiles to the theoretical ballistic limit for equivalent spheres as predicted by the penetration equations.