Ballistic perforation resistance of plain and reinforced concrete slabs - An experimental and numerical study

As concrete is the most used construction material globally, it is vital to understand how this complex composite material behaves when subjected to extreme and potentially devastating loads like explosions or ballistic impacts. In this study, we investigated the ballistic perforation resistance of 100 mm thick plain and reinforced concrete slabs both experimentally and numerically. Two rebar configurations with the same rebar density were used to investigate the effect of rebar diameter and spacing. Using the calibrated material constants and reasonable assumptions, we obtained good predictions of the ballistic limit velocities in LS-DYNA with a modified version of the Holmquist-Johnson-Cook concrete model. The primary objective of the study was thus to validate a rather simple constitutive relation intended for large-scale numerical simulations of concrete structures exposed to ballistic impact loading. A note is made that the data used herein already has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.