Critical ricochet performance of penetrator impacting concrete targets

The critical ricochet angle of a penetrator impacting hard targets obliquely needs to be analyzed and estimated to ensure that no ricochet occur while the penetrator hits the targets. In this work the experiments on the ricochet performance of the penetrator with a big length-to-diameter ratio impacting reinforced concrete targets at a velocity of 250-430 m/s were conducted, the critical ricochet angles in which it impacts the reinforced concrete targets possessing a compressive strength of 30 MPa and 60 MPa respectively were analyzed and estimated, and the envelope curves of the critical ricochet angle were obtained. The results show that, when the intensity of the target is maintained the same, the projectile's critical ricochet angle increases with the increase of the penetration velocity. This increase gradually slows down. At the same penetration velocity, with the increase of the targets' strength, the projectile's critical ricochet angle decreases. The projectile's critical ricochet angles from the analysis of the empirical formula were lower than those from the experiments, but the deviation is less than 3°