Finite Element Simulation of Ballistic Impact from Small Arm Bullet: A Case Study of 9 mm Parabellum Bullets on AISI1008, AA1100 and AA5083

Abstract

This research work creates computer models to simulate ballistic impacts of a small arm bullet vianon-linear finite element methods. This work studies the kinetic transformation behavior of the bullet to thetarget and their deformation right after the impact. The target materials in this work consisted of 3 homogeneousmaterials: AISI1008 and AA1100 with the thickness of 2, 4 and 6 mm, and AA5083 with the thicknessof 4 and 6 mm. In the physical test, a Glock 19 handgun and 9 mm Parabellum bullets were used. Theexperimental results showed that AA1100 targets were completely penetrated at every thickness whileAISI1008 and AA5083 were not completely penetrated by the bullets. And, AISI1008 at the 6 mm thicknessindicated the best performance on the penetration resistance and the energy reflection from the bulletimpact in this study. In the model tests, the bullet was modeled in 2 cases: rigid bullets and deformablebullets. The initial velocities in this study ranged between 100-200 m/s. The simulation results showed thatthe initial velocity of the bullet in the model has a significant impact to the prediction accuracy and thebullet model as a deformable body provides a much better prediction than that as a rigid body.

Keywords : Ballistic Impact / Deformation / Non-linear Finite Element Model / Simulation / VirtualExperiment