Modeling the Effects of Structural Ribs in Kevlar Laminates for Personnel Protection

摘要

The need for advanced protection for individual soldiers and the desire to reduce the physiological burden on the protective system is driving the increasingly lighter weight solutions. Some protective system requirements, facial protection, for example involve mitigating blunt impacts as well as fragments. This leads to compromise in design with the structural requirement for impact often driving the overall weight of the solution. In an effort to explore alternate design approaches for light weight impact and ballistic protection an experimental and modeling study was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of structural features, such as ribs and hat stiffeners, on the bending stiffness of protection system made of Kevlar laminates. This paper presents simulation of the response of the laminated Kevlar coupons containing varying rib features to the external impact loading, using LS-DYNA nonlinear finite element analysis software. Details of the model and simulation approach and the results obtained from that analysis are included in this paper. The numerical results compared the simulated deflection to values obtained experimentally from drop tower testing. Parametric studies of material properties were also conducted to better evaluate which properties have the greatest influence deflection for a given design. The results demonstrate the value of structural design approaches to improve performance for light weight composites. This paper will discuss the technical approach and outcomes from the study and the implication to future soldier protection solutions.