Further Results on the Analysis of Penetrator Stability in Sand and Soil Targets — I

In an earlier paper [1], a fundamental analysis of penetrator stability was presented that resulted in a simple criterion for penetrator design. This criterion was based on some features of long rod penetrator design that could be anticipated: namely, length, cross-sectional area of the shank, area moment of inertia of the cross-section, and the elastic properties of the body material. A number of approximations were made in this early work to reduce the complexity of the modeling effort. Of course, this led to some uncertainties in the results. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the more prominent sources of uncertainty and to refine the stability estimate. Of specific concern is the effect of a crude approximation on the lowest Eigen function in the problem. In this paper, a small parameter is identified and used to find a regular perturbation solution. The results are found to be in good agreement with those presented earlier.Copyright © 2005 by ASME