Water Droplet Impact Damage in Ceramics at Subsonic and Supersonic Velocities

In this study, waterdrop impact damage on zinc sulfide was analyzed by using a non-ordinary state-based peridynamics method. A ceramic material model, Johnson-Holmquist-Beissel (JHB) was developed as a correspondence material model approach into a peridynamics framework. Zinc sulfide, which is a commonly used ceramic material in the aerospace industry was modeled by using the correspondence material model approach. High-speed waterdrop impact can cause significant damage in ceramic materials especially at supersonic and hypersonic ranges. This issue needs to be addressed by the computational algorithms to further damage resistance of ceramics. In this regard, zinc sulfide material was tested by impacting water droplets, and failure shape and metrics were derived by the peridynamics simulations. The predicted damage sites and subsurface fractures showed sufficient quantitative similarities with the experimental data. The peridynamic-estimated maximum fracture depth measurements demonstrate a good qualitative match with those of experimental for a wide impact velocity range. The proposed peridynamic approach is capable of accurately estimate ceramic material damage due to high-speed water droplet impact.