Experimental Investigation of the Crater Caused by Hypervelocity Rod Projectile Impacting on Rocks

To investigate the cratering effects of hypervelocity rod projectile impacting on rocks, a two-stage light gas gun was used to carry out 10 groups of small-scale experiments, whose velocity ranges from 1.5 km/s to 4.1 km/s. After each experiment, the morphology and size of the hypervelocity impacting crater were accurately obtained by using a device for image scanning. According to the morphology of the final crater, the impact crater can be divided into crushing area, spallation area, and radial crack area. Based on the experimental results of steel projectile vertical impacting on granite targets, the relationship between the depth and the diameter of the crater is analyzed, i.e., h/D≈0.1∼0.2; it shows that the depth of the crater is much smaller than the diameter of the crater, and the crater seems to be a shallow dish. The relation between the kinetic energy of the projectile and the size of the crater was discussed. With the increase of the projectile kinetic energy, it is uncertain whether the depth of the crater increases, but the volume of the crater will increase. Lastly, dimensionless analysis of the impact crater was carried out. Specifically, the limitations of point source solutions to hypervelocity rod projectile impact cratering have been proved, and there is no essential difference to calculate the final crater by using the energy scale or the momentum scale.