Protection Engineering Consultants and Southwest Research Institute developed a novel Laser Induced Particle Impact Test (LIPIT) methodology through a Phase I STTR effort for the U.S. Army Research Office. The purpose of this test device is to provide low-cost, high-throughput ballistic testing of materials to supplement or replace conventional V50 ballistic testing and enable data-driven design of next-generation protection materials.
The test methodology was developed and evaluated with analytical models and LS-DYNA computational models. Experiments were conducted for a range of design variants in 11 different test groups, including a set of baseline experiments using conventional LIPIT methods drawn from the literature. Velocity measurements were taken using a PDV and high-speed videography. The prototype achieved an average velocity of 450 m/s for 300 um diameter steel microspheres, which was a substantial increase in kinetic energy. The key drivers of performance were determined using a combination of experiments, analytical models, and computational models. The models and test evidence indicated that the velocity for this approach could potentially be increased to 1,000 m/s or higher for 200-300 um diameter steel microspheres.
A separate test series was conducted to evaluate how well the microsphere tests could be scaled to infer full-scale ballistic performance. Tests were conducted at different length scales. The smaller scale tests were conducted with the LIPIT test apparatus and the larger scale tests were conducted with a miniature gas gun. The test results showed that the ballistic results of the microsphere tests scaled well with the larger tests for ductile metallic materials.
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.
