A Simple Analytical Model to Simulate Textile Fabric Ballistic Impact Behavior

Composite materials have become very attractive as personal and vehicle armors because of their light weight and high performance. Unfortunately, these materials are difficult to simulate numerically or analytically, and the only way to check their performance is experimentally. A first step could be the study of the primary components of the composite. The fabric is undoubtedly the most important one, and an analytical model of its behavior is developed in this paper. The model calculates residual velocities, velocity and strain in the fabric histories, and absorbed energies. The comparison with experimental results for Kevlar 29 and the application of the model to Dyneema are very satisfactory as a demonstration of the good predictive power of an analytical model that is easy to understand and easy to compute.