Explicit failure model for boron carbide ceramics under shock loading

Ceramic materials have a long-term industrial demand due to their high mechanical hardness and chemical and temperature resistance. They are brittle and tend to lose strength under heavy loads which complicates the development of a comprehensive material model for simulation of engineering prototypes containing ceramic parts. We developed an improved failure model of ceramics based on the well-known Johnson-Holmquist approach. This model redefines the damage rate equation using a consistent definition of the total plastic strain in the failed material. It reduces the number of free model parameters and enables the plastic strain to be explicitly accumulated during the failure process. The corresponding non-iterative algorithm utilizing this explicit failure model is developed. It is successfully validated by simulation of the wave profiles obtained in plate-impact experiments with boron carbide using the contact smoothed particle hydrodynamic method.