Experimental and numerical investigations concerning the dynamics of penetration processes

The perforation of aluminium plats by means of fast steel penetrators shows a definite change in cratering as the impact velocity is increased beyond a critical value. It is supposed that this change is due to the additional occurrence of strong shock waves. For substantiation shock wave propagation during perforating was determined by means of a manganin probe technique. Experiments were supported by computational simulations using the Lagrange‐code DYSMS/L. First results are presented.