Numerical analysis of ballistic composite materials

To a design engineer confronted with the design of lightweight composite material armor products, the task of sorting through the design exercise can be daunting. Often there are conflicting requirements in terms of cost, weight, thickness, material availability, manufacturability, etc. Computer modeling is an indispensable tool to help the ballistic design engineer manage this complex task in a reasonable amount of time and with available resources. Discussions in this chapter deal with the task of building and executing computer models for lightweight composite materials and using them as a predictive tool without trial and error of conducting expensive ballistic testing. The finite element method is a numerical tool that is widely used in various industries. A powerful design tool is available to design engineers when finite element analysis is combined with experimental techniques that are used to characterize material behavior and verify and validate computer models.