Behaviour of Roma Plastilina upon blunt projectile impact

Abstract
The present paper deals with the study of the behaviour of Roma Plastilina (RP) subjected to a blunt headed projectile impact in order to develop suitable dynamic material models for numerical simulations of body armour protection systems (BAPS) to complement the experimental tests. A tray of bare RP clay was placed normal to the projectile travelling direction and a flat nosed projectile was then fired at an impact velocity of up to 50 m/s; the penetration process was captured using a high speed video camera system and the final depth of penetration was measured accurately. Separate quasi-static compression tests were carried out on the RP to determine the basic material properties which are then incorporated in a Drucker-Prager constitutive relation for the RP. Finally, numerical simulations were carried out using this constitutive relation in the explicit finite element code RADIOSS for all the impact test cases. The numerical results were found to match well with the experimental observations. Thus, the finite element-based modelling guidelines for RP outlined in this paper can be used with confidence for further developments relating to BAPS.