The following discussion concerns modelling of fracture in steel plates during an impact test, in which both target and striker are manufactured from the same material, high-strength high-hardness armour steel – Mars® 300. The test conditions (3 mm thick targets, projectiles with different nose shapes at impact velocity lower than 400 m/s) result in severely damaged components, which results in an analysis of stress states showing material failure. Numerical analyses are performed using two material models: the Johnson-Cook approach, as traditionally used in impact simulations, accounting for the effect of stress triaxiality, strain rate and temperature and for comparison, a simulation by means of the stress triaxiality and Lode angle parameter-dependent Hosford-Coulomb model, also incorporating the effect of the strain rate on a fracture initiation. The aim of the study is to analyse the mechanisms of penetration and perforation observed in the armour steel plates and validation of the modelling approaches.

The effect of the initial porosity on the material response under multi-axial stress state for S235JR steel using the Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) material model was examined. Three levels of initial porosity, defined by the void volume fraction f₀, were considered: zero porosity for fully dense material without pores, average and maximum porosity according to the metallurgical requirements for S235JR steel. The effect of the initial porosity on the material response was noticed for tensile elements under multi-axial stress state defined by high stress triaxiality σₘ/σe = 1.345. This effect was especially noticeable at the range of the material failure. In terms of the load-bearing capacity of the elements, the conservative results were obtained when maximum value of f₀ = 0.0024 was used for S235JR steel under multi-axial stress state, and this value is recommended to use in the calculations in order to preserve the highest safety level of the structure. In usual engineering calculations, the average porosity defined by f₀ = 0.001 may be applied for S235JR.