Advanced Armor Vehicle Design

This project applies a combination of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Genetic Algorithms (GA), and CAD software to the problem of optimum armor design. Previous work for TACOM has established the efficacy of ANN/GA as applied to the problem of 1-D armor design. This new work will extend the concept to full 3-D vehicle geometries (CAD models). The CAD part of the code will handle the 3D data describing the vehicle geometry, the selection of threats, and the generation of 3D rays through the vehicle model. The ANN/GA part of the code will optimize the armor configuration based on the sample of 3D rays. The optimization will take into account a cost and weight budget. It is anticipated that the new code will determine armor designs optimized over the entire vehicle surface, as opposed to point design solutions