Author(s)

Francesco Ragnedda, Mauro Serra

.

The present paper deals with the optimum shape design of an absolutely rigid impactor which penetrates into a semi-infinite concrete shield. The objective function to maximize is the depth of penetration (DOP for short) of the impactor; in the case of impactors with axisymmetric shapes DOP is calculated using formulas obtained by Ben-Dor et al. [1-3] with the method of local variations [4] and based on the mechanical model proposed by Forrestal and Tzou [5]. In the present paper we show that using a different class of admissible functions, more general than the axisymmetric one, better results can be obtained. To solve the formulated optimization problem we used a custom version of the particle swarm optimization method (briefly denoted by PSOA), a very recent numerical optimization algorithm of guided random global search. Numerical results show the optimal shape for various types of shields and corresponding DOP; some Ben-Dor et al. [1-3] results are compared to solutions obtained.

Impactor; Optimization; Particle swarm; Global Search

F. Ragnedda and M. Serra, "Optimum Shape of High Speed Impactor for Concrete Targets Using PSOA Heuristic," Engineering, Vol. 2 No. 4, 2010, pp. 257-262. doi: 10.4236/eng.2010.24035.