Projectile Impact

Book excerpt: High energy impact phenomena have been investigated by engineers of various backgrounds and disciplines. Structures often need to be designed against impact or potential attack and on the other hand the removal of decommissioned structures may be achieved by shaped charge impact, alternatively known as explosive cutting. The topic of ballistic impact is wide-ranging and encompasses various levels of kinetic energy input as well as a multitude of projectile-target materials and geometries. It has thus become the object of many experimental and analytical investigations resulting in numerous sparsely-spread articles in periodicals and conference proceedings as well as monographs narrowly focusing on specific types and ranges of impact scenarios. This volume describes a broad spectrum of analytical and experimental work in this area, thus providing considerable insight into the complexity and diversity of impact phenomena. By addressing a significant number of important issues it combines, rather uniquely, subject breadth and density with in-depth study of impact events of great engineering interest.