Energy Investigation into Damage Evaluation of Pressure Wall at Oblique Impacts

Abstract

To analyze the shielding performance of Whipple bumpers, it is essential to clarify the characteristics of a debris cloud that is created owing to a hypervelocity impact. However, lesser attention has been paid on studies on the debris clouds produced by oblique impacts compared to those produced by normal impacts. We thus evaluate the damage of the pressure walls after oblique impacts. Two energy indices are proposed that can determine the destructive capability to the pressure wall. The proposed energy indices are related to the kinematic energy of the debris clouds. These energy indices are demonstrated to show the destructive capability and to uniformly evaluate the damage of the pressure wall. The spatial distributions of the kinetic energy are calculated by the smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation. In addition to the simulation, impact experiments are conducted with two pieces of apparatus: a two-stage light gas sun and a single-stage powder gun. We discussed the correlation between the characteristics of the debris clouds at the oblique impacts and the damage of the pressure walls.