High strain rate fracture behaviour of fused silica

Fused silica is a high purity synthetic amorphous silicon dioxide characterized by low thermal expansion coefficient, excellent optical qualities and exceptional transmittance over a wide spectral range. Because of its wide use in the military industry as window material, it may be subjected to high-energy ballistic impacts. Under such dynamic conditions, post-yield response of the ceramic as well as the strain rate related effects become significant and should be accounted for in the constitutive modelling. In this study, the Johnson-Holmquist (J-H) model parameters have been identified by inverse calibration technique, on selected validation test configurations, according to the procedure described hereafter. Numerical simulations were performed with LS-DYNA and IMPETUS-FEA, a general non-linear finite element software which offers NURBS finite element technology for the simulation of large deformation and fracture in materials. In order to overcome numerical drawbacks associated with element erosion, a modified version of the J-H model is proposed.