CHARACTERIZATION OF ENERGY DISSIPATION AND MATERIAL FAILURE MECHANISMS IN HIGH-VELOCITY IMPACT OF MAGNESIUM ALLOYS

High-velocity impact analysis is crucial in defense, aerospace, and materials science, involving scenarios ranging from projectiles hitting land vehicles to supersonic aircraft traveling in dusty environments. This work presents a detailed computational analysis of high-velocity impacts using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. Impact events include a stainless steel projectile against a magnesium alloy target plate, with impact velocities ranging from 1.2 km/s to 2.4 km/s. We employ carefully calibrated plasticity, fracture, and equation of state models to characterize the behaviors of both projectile and target over a wide range of strain rates and temperatures. Our simulation results include the evolution of the von-Mises effective stress and temperature fields at different impact velocities. Several key material failure mechanisms are observed, such as spalling and adiabatic shearing. We partition and quantify the dissipation of the impact kinetic energy into the kinetic and internal energies of both the projectile and the target. Finally, we analyze the time histories of the corresponding proportions during the impact events and the distributions of energies across all material points at key time points. We find that at all impact velocities, the target’s kinetic energy peaks when the shock wave reaches the back face and stabilizes after complete penetration. As the impact velocity increases, the kinetic energy of the target and the internal energy of the projectile contribute more significantly to the dissipation of the impact energy, while the contribution of the target internal energy decreases.