Tutorials for 33rd ISB

Tutorials for 33rd ISB
The Education Committee (EC) is happy to announce the following five short courses at the upcoming 33rd ISB in Bruges, Belgium, on Monday, October 16th, 2023:

AM sessions (9 am to 1 pm)
MT101: Shock Physics: Dynamic Behavior of Materials by Dr. John Borg, from Marquette University, USA
VS101: Protection and Survivability by Dr. Rachael Hazael and Dr. Kate Hewins, from Cranfield University, UK
EB101: Exterior Ballistics by Pierre Wey, from ISL, FR 

PM sessions (2 pm to 6 pm)
EM101: Explosion Mechanics by Peter Norton, Mike Harris, from Cranfield University, UK
TB201: Applied Machine Learning for Terminal Ballistics by Dr. Shannon Ryan, from Deakin University, AUS

MT101 – Shock Physics: Dynamic Behavior of Materials 
This course, given by Dr John Borg, aims at introducing:

• Material Tests & Modelling
• Dynamic Material Behavior

Course Objectives
The objectives of the course are to provide the ability:

• To perform simple calculations (impedance matching) to predict pressure and stress, thermodynamic states for a given set of impact conditions.
• To perform elastic/plastic wave timing and predict spall failure calculations.
• To make simple estimations of phase change and detonation states.Introduction: what is a shock, why do we care?  

Course Content

• Elastic behavior and elastic waves.
• Plastic Waves:  Rankine-Hugoniot jump equations: Examples. 
• Equations of State: Examples and Resources. 
• Hydrodynamic impedance matching: Example. 
• Hydrodynamic impedance matching: Example. 
• An introduction of strength and strength modeling:  Examples. 
• Attenuation, Interactions and Spall:  Examples. 
• Phase changes and Chemical Reactions. 
• Detonation: Examples

VS101: Protection and Survivability 
This course, given by Dr. Rachael Hazael and Dr. Kate Hewins.

Course Objectives
The objectives of the course are to provide an introduction into:

• The evaluation of available protection systems for a given ballistic threat. 
• The assessment of potential wounding/injury/damage for a given threat. 
• The testing and analytical methodologies for current/future projectile defeat.

Course content 

• Penetrating, blunt and blast injuries. 
• Tissue Simulants. 
• BABT. 
• Metallic and non-metallic armours. 
• Overview of analytical and numerical modelling. 

EB101 – Introduction to Exterior Ballistics
This course is given by Pierre Wey

Course Objectives
The objectives of this course are:

• List of forces and moments acting on the projectile. 
• Summary of the trajectory models from vacuum ballistics to 6-DoF model. 
• Basic conditions for projectile stability. 

Course Content
The course content is made up of:

• Introduction. 
• References systems. 
• Forces and moments acting on the projectile. 
• Gravity and atmospheric models. Trajectory models: Vacuum ballistics; Point mass model; Modified point mass model; 6 degrees-of-freedom model

• Numerical integration of the equations of motion
• Typical examples of trajectories
• Linearized angular motion and stability of the projectile 
• Trajectory dispersion and Monte Carlo simulation. 

EM101 – Explosion Mechanics
This course is given by Peter Norton and Mike Harris.

Course Objectives

• To introduce warhead requirements, and an understanding of the various warhead technologies and their classification that are typically employed to defeat the typical target-sets. 
• To gain an understanding of the need to study a range of different warhead technologies including shaped charges and explosively formed projectiles, fragmentation and blast warheads. 
• To gain an understanding of the basic physics and mechanics that govern shaped charges, fragmenting and blast warheads and the importance of material properties and engineering tolerances in controlling their performance. 
• Provision of the basic design principles to enable attendees to design warheads for specific applications. This will include how to apply and exploit analytic / empirical (and numerical simulation) methods coupled with experiments and the extensive literature on these subjects. 

Course Content

• Why do we need different warhead types? 
• How to meet the challenges posed by modern threats? 
• Natural fragmentation and pre-formed fragment warhead design principles, including methods to control and direct the fragment number and vectors. The role of materials and their response under shock loading in driving the fracture and direction of the fragmentation process. 
• Blast warheads: An understanding of the science of explosions and the characterization of the blast wave. The influence of stand-off and height above ground on the shape of the blast wave. 
• How does a blast wave scale? – scaling laws, the role of explosive type, TNT equivalence in comparing the effects of different explosives and charge shape. 
• Experimental methods. 
• The basic physics of the interaction of a blast wave with a structure and the methods employed to measure this interaction.  
• The hollow charge effect – the precursor to the shaped charge. 
• A brief history of the development of the shaped charge. 
  • Fundamental design principles and performance of a shaped charge,  including the role of liner shape and material in defining the shape of the projectile produced – from the shaped charge jet to the slow stretching jet and explosively formed projectile. 
  • The penetration performance of a shaped charge and the importance of material properties and engineering tolerances in their manufacture. 
• Penetrator warheads as a class of warheads that contain energetic and reactive materials within a case and can penetrate structures and geologic targets. Their ability to deliver combined fragmentation and blast effects behind the target therefore provide a powerful concept for exploitation by the warhead designer. The basic principles of their design will be presented and discussed together with simple methods to understand the interaction of the blast and fragmentation fields.

TB201: Applied Machine Learning for Terminal Ballistics 
This course will be given by Dr. Shannon Ryan

Course Objectives
The objectives of the course are to introduce:

• The use machine learning to predict terminal ballistic performance. 
• The use machine learning to optimise armour system designs. 
• The understand the opportunities and limitations of applied machine learning in terminal ballistics.

Course Content

• Machine learning (ML) for predicting terminal ballistics: 
  • Introduction to ML for regression modelling. 
  • Introduction to ML for classification modelling.
  • Case study: predicting V50 of monolithic armour impacted by small calibre projectiles and fragments (outcomes: data preparation, model selection, hyperparameter tuning). 
• Advanced predictive modelling for terminal ballistics: 
  • Feature engineering. 
  • Physics-informed machine learning. 
  • Working with sparse and unbalanced datasets. 
  • Working with multi-fidelity datasets. 
  • Case study: predicting rod depth of penetration into a semi-infinite target (outcomes: feature engineering, physics-informed neural network, enforced monotonicity). 
  • Case study: predicting the performance of complex armour configurations from a non-optimal dataset (outcomes: feature importance ranking, minority over-sampling, confidence bounds). 
• Adaptive experimental optimization for armour design: 
  • Introduction to Bayesian optimization (BO). 
  • Development of a BO workflow for armour design. 
  • Case study: optimizing the design of a multi-element armour against small calibre projectiles and fragments. 
  • Case study: optimizing the design of an explosive reactive armour against multiple threat types.

Further information 
These courses will be organized by the Education Committee and facilitated by ASMI. Each attendee will receive PowerPoint slides distributed as a hardcopy and / members.

Please note that course registration can only be made during online registration for the conference.

We look forward to your feedback and any questions you may have through sending a email to education@ballistics.org 
Dr. Markus Graswald
Education Committee Chair