Predictive Assessment of Material Failure

The destructive effects of current and emerging exploding threats are routinely reported from current conflicts around the world. Protective structures and platforms, commonly consisting of multiple layers materials such as High Hard Steel (HHS), are used to reduce the catastrophic effect of these threats. Although full scale blast trials have been conducted by Dstl to assess the protection level provided by a range of armour technologies against blast loading, the fundamental cause of brittle failure during overmatch is not well understood. An increased understanding of the behaviour of HHS under extreme dynamic loading is essential to support advice provided by Dstl Armour SMEs, particularly with the global uncertainty associated with current conflicts.

Understanding the fundamental science of the catastrophic failure of high hardness, brittle, materials can benefit multiple research fields. Whilst a typical example is the failure of a protective panel in a vehicle, this could describe all metallic materials that may experience a blast failure, such as pressurised pipes and other key parts of the UKs critical national infrastructure (energy). This will have exploitation far beyond the initial Defence and Security domain, such as gas infrastructure, particularly given the current consideration of transitioning to hydrogen gas as a cleaner energy source.