Particulate Impact/Erosion Phenomena and Materials Failure for Supersonic KVs

The development of missile technology and missile systems will benefit greatly from a capability to simulate the dynamic particulate aerodynamic environment that a supersonic missile experiences during flight. Such a capability will provide the systems design engineer the ability to assess the mechanical and optical performance of the targeting system in a solid or liquid particle environment and determine whether or not the window will fail or to what extent the missile's ability to kill the target is degraded. Currently this capability does not exist. Systems developers must rely on costly and time consuming testing that in all but a few examples do not meet the requirements or rigors of the particulate environment. This effort develop a capability to incorporate into the ATAC3D code a particulate model that can model the impact environment, statistically quantify the number of impacts, the size distribution of the impacts, the level of damage experienced by the window, probability of failure, and optical performance.