Protection Engineering Consultants and Southwest Research Institute developed a novel Laser-Driven Microscale Ballistics test methodology through a Phase II STTR effort for the U.S. Army Research Office. This test device allows for rapid, inexpensive ballistic testing for early-stage evaluation of next-generation protection materials.
This test apparatus applies the LIPIT technique to substantially larger projectiles, generating kinetic energies several orders of magnitude higher. Preliminary modeling and experiments were performed for a range of design variants during the first project phase. The current Phase 2 effort has resulted in substantial improvements to the level of automation, test quantity throughput, and projectile speed. The fully constructed system will be capable of achieving several thousand shots and automatically characterizing V50 for up to 100 target material specimens in an 8-hour workday. This test method offers several advantages as an early-stage alternative to full-scale ballistic testing, including substantial cost savings, rapid results, and very low material quantity requirements. These enable users to rapidly assess performance of numerous material permutations in early material development stages, prior to scaling up manufacturing.
A separate experimental study was conducted to evaluate how well the microsphere tests could be scaled to infer full-scale ballistic performance. Tests were conducted on several classes of materials, including ductile metals, brittle metals, fabrics, and ceramics at different length scales. The smaller scale tests were conducted with the laser-driven test apparatus and the larger scale tests were conducted with a miniature gas gun and powder gun.
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Army SBIR/STTR Program Office and the Army Research Office under Contract No. W911NF-23-C-0016. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors.
2025-04-09 09:00:00
