Aluminium-Rubber Composite - Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Perforation Process at Ambient and High Temperatures

In this work, the impact resistance of an aluminium-rubber sandwich composite plate under impact loading is investigated using experimental and numerical approaches. The experimental tests were carried out using a perforation gas gun for a wide range of impact velocities from 40 m/s to 120 m/s and for two different temperatures 20 degrees C and 150 degrees C. Based on experimental results, the failure mode, initial/residual velocity curves and the ballistic limit velocities of aluminium under different temperatures were analysed. The effect of rubber reinforcement layer thickness in the aluminium sandwich was also evaluated. It was found that the composite plate with 9 mm of rubber provides higher performance in terms of energy absorption than that of 3 mm thick, which is demonstrated by approximately 10% reduction in the ballistic limit. In contrast, an increase in temperature considerably reduces these ballistic performances. It was also found that petaling is a typical failure mode in the perforation process. The rubber has an effect on the failure pattern of both aluminum plates. In addition, a thermomechanical model using a finite element method was developed to simulate the response of the aluminum-rubber composite plate under a high energy rate loading condition. The numerical results show a good agreement in relation to the experimental results in terms of failure mechanism, number of petals and energy absorption.