Dynamic Evaluation of Hypersonic Missile Debris Penetration

Non-warhead debris from a typical anti-ship or air-to-air missile can comprise as much as 70% of the total striking mass, which makes it a crucial component of any lethality or survivability assessment and increasingly important as stand-off missile programs are rising in demand.  Many current LVS modeling tools in use by the government do not address residual non-warhead missile debris at all, and those that do use models based on legacy weapon debris data from 1970’s and 1980’s era missiles that were built with significantly different materials and components compared to modern systems. In order to address these issues, Corvid Technologies proposes to study the penetration mechanics of residual hypersonic missile debris through multiple plate arrays to support the development of improved fast-running penetration lethality models.  This proposal describes a robust experimental test campaign, augmented by innovative numerical simulation techniques, which will generate the experimental data required to validate advanced penetration mechanics methodologies currently in development by the Air Force, Navy and others. The proposed effort is divided into three separate test campaigns: Test Campaign 1 will leverage existing hardware from a previous effort to conduct a series of sub-scale debris penetration tests to reduce risk going into the full scale testing;  Test Campaign 2 will evaluate the penetration of actual missile debris launched through multi-plate arrays and develop a projectile surrogation technique for conducting follow-on ballistic testing at a lower cost; Test Campaign 3 will use the debris surrogation methodology developed during Test Campaign 2 to conduct a parametric test campaign which will generate an experimental database of debris penetration results for representative missile debris versus a variety of target materials.  This database will be used for calibration and validation of on-going fast-running model (FRM) development being conducted under a separate AFRL contract.