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The response of dry and water saturated sand slugs impacting normally oriented and inclined rigid-stationary targets with four different surface coatings is measured with an emphasis on the quantification of the momentum transmitted from the slugs into the targets. The targets were coated with Alumina, PTFE, Aluminium or sandpaper layers in order to investigate the effect of varying surface hardness and surface roughness. In all the cases, the fraction of the slug momentum transferred into the target was equal for dry and water saturated sand slugs and also independent of the slug velocity over the range that is investigated here. For normal impacts, the surface coatings had no measurable influence on the momentum transfer into the targets and this was attributed to the symmetry of the impact event. However, the break of symmetry in the inclined impact cases resulted in two non-zero components of the net transmitted momentum into the targets and a strong influence of the surface coatings. This is attributed to friction between the sand particles and the target surface with the resultant transmitted momentum increasing in the order Alumina to PTFE to Aluminium to sandpaper surface coatings. In all cases, the transmitted momentum was less than the corresponding value under normal impact. Coupled discrete particle/ Lagrangian simulations of these experiments with the sand particles modelled as spheres captured the normal impact measurements with a high degree of fidelity. However, the simulations underestimated the transmitted momentum for the inclined impacts especially for the rough surface coatings such as the sandpaper: increasing the friction coefficient between the particles and the target in the simulations did not improve the predictions. We demonstrate that this discrepancy is due to the spherical particle assumption: in the experiments the sand particles are sub-spherical and this reduces the tendency of particles to roll on the target surface and thereby increases frictional interactions. Increasing the radius of gyration of particles decreased the discrepancy between the measurements and the predictions but yet could not accurately predict all components of the transmitted momentum. Most numerical calculations tend to use spherical particles to represent the impacting granular media. However, this study demonstrates the need to appropriately parameterise particle shape in such discrete particle calculations to accurately capture the granular media/ structure interactions.

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It is widely acknowledged that ceramic armor experiences an unsteady penetration response: an impacting projectile may erode on the surface of a ceramic target without substantial penetration for a significant amount of time and then suddenly start to penetrate the target. Although known for more than four decades, this phenomenon, commonly referred to as dwell, remains largely unexplained. Here, we use scaled analog experiments with a low-speed water jet and a soft, translucent target material to investigate dwell. The transient target response, in terms of depth of penetration and impact force, is captured using a high-speed camera in combination with a piezoelectric force sensor. We observe the phenomenon of dwell using a soft (noncracking) target material. The results show that the penetration rate increases when the flow of the impacting water jet is reversed due to the deformation of the jet-target interface--this reversal is also associated with an increase in the force exerted by the jet on the target. Creep penetration experiments with a constant indentation force did not show an increase in the penetration rate, confirming that flow reversal is the cause of the unsteady penetration rate. Our results suggest that dwell can occur in a ductile noncracking target due to flow reversal. This phenomenon of flow reversal is rather widespread and present in a wide range of impact situations, including water-jet cutting, needleless injection, and deposit removal via a fluid jet.impact loading | ballistic penetration | fluid-structure interaction | interface defeat C eramic materials, although having a reputation for being inherently brittle, have been used for different armor systems for almost a century. The application of ceramic-based armor ranges from protection of aircraft and personnel against smallcaliber threats, to vehicle armor designed to defeat long-rod penetrators and shaped charges.Here, we consider thick, well-confined ceramic armor systems designed to withstand the high-velocity impact of heavy-metal longrod penetrators. Such systems are extensively used to study the dynamic penetration properties of ceramics over relatively long time frames: the confinement prevents/reduces the macroscopic cracking of the ceramic target and thus provides a more controlled experimental setting where statistical effects of cracking are minimized.The time-resolved penetration behavior of ceramic armor has been extensively studied over the past 45 y using flash radiography, a technique used for impact experiments involving optically opaque targets (1-4). As sketched in Fig.

a b s t r a c tThe dynamic response of end-clamped sandwich and monolithic beams to impact by high-velocity tungsten carbide (WC) particle columns (slugs) has been measured with the aim of developing an understanding of the interaction of ejecta from a shallow-buried explosion with structures. The monolithic beams were made from stainless steel, while the sandwich beams of equal areal mass comprised stainless steel face sheets and an aluminium honeycomb core. High-speed imaging was used to measure the transient transverse deflection of the beams, to record the dynamic modes of deformation, and to observe the flow of the WC particles upon impact. The experiments show that sandwich beams deflect less than the monolithic beams both in normal and inclined impact situations. Moreover, the deflections of all beams in the inclined orientation were less than their respective deflections in the normal orientation at the same slug velocity. Intriguingly, the ratio of the deflection of the sandwich to monolithic beams remains approximately constant with increasing slug velocity for inclined impact but increases for normal impact; i.e. inclined sandwich beams retain their advantage over monolithic beams with increasing slug velocity. Dynamic force measurements reveal that (i) the momentum transferred from the impacting slug to both monolithic and sandwich beams is the same, and (ii) the interaction between the impacting particles and the dynamic deformation of the inclined monolithic and sandwich beams results in a momentum transfer into these beams that is equal to or greater than the momentum of the slug. These experimental findings demonstrate that contrary to intuition and widespread belief, the performance enhancement obtained from employing beam inclination is not due to a reduction in transferred momentum. Finally, we show that increasing the stand-off distance decreases beam deflections. This is because the slugs lengthen as they traverse towards their target and thus the duration of loading is extended with increasing standoff. However, combining increased stand-off with sandwich construction does not yield the synergistic benefits of sandwich construction combined with beam inclination.