Automated Subscale Ballistic Test Platform

New armor systems have the potential to maintain or increase protection while decreasing SWaP and cost.  Prior to integration into fielded systems, armor materials and configuration must be subjected to the anticipated attack conditions in a controlled test environment.  Ballistic performance of novel or enhanced materials is typically verified using traditional ballistics testing such as the V50 test for armor as described in MIL-STD-662.  Full scale testing demands a level of rigor that is ultimately at odds with modern demands for rapid materials development using a design-build-test cycle.  Improvements in throughput to the ‘test’ phase offer the largest overall increase in development cycle frequency. Sub-scale ballistics testing coupled with data driven models are a potential method for providing an initial screening step to determine if new candidate materials should continue to full scale testing.  Sub-scale testing provides faster feedback to the material design phase by eliminating unnecessary full-scale testing.  Large volumes of data generated by sub-scale testing can be used to create material models that not only screen poor performers, but also inform methods for increasing performance. Corvid Technologies (in partnership with North Carolina State University) proposes a gas gun-based indenter apparatus to produce large volumes of high strain rate impacts with automated instrumentation to rapidly evaluate the data.  The impact apparatus will be designed for high throughput so several operations related to the impact platform and data reduction will be automated.  An instrumentation setup at the impact site will capture relevant material response using high speed video, photon doppler velocimetry and load cells.  In-situ measurement of impact velocity, target rear surface velocity, impact force, and fragment imagery will be enabled by the target instrumentation.  A software toolkit will route the data collected during the experiment and automate the extraction of key information.  Developed methods will prioritize automation of data processing to obtain relevant material parameters that can be extrapolated to infer ballistic performance.  The goal of this product will be a piece of equipment used to supplement existing full scale ballistics testing techniques.