Overcoming element erosion limitations within Lagrangian finite element codes

Lagrangian finite element methods have been used extensively in the past to study the non-linear transient behaviour of materials, ranging from crash test of cars to simulating bird strikes on planes.... However, as this type of space discretization does not allow for motion of the material through the mesh when modelling extremely large deformations, the mesh becomes highly distorted. This paper describes some limitations and applicability of this type of analysis for high velocity impacts. A method for dealing with this problem is by the erosion of elements is proposed where the main issue is the deformation of element failure strains. Results were compared with empirical perforation results and were found to be in good agreement. The results were then used to simulate high velocity impacts upon a multi-layered aluminium target, in order to predict a ballistic limit curve. LS-DYNA3D was used as the FE solver for all simulations. Meshes were generated with Truegrid.