Eur. Phys. J. E (2012) 35: 7
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2012-12007-0

Regular Article

The scaling and dynamics of a projectile obliquely impacting a granular medium

¹ Key Laboratory of Mechanics on Disaster and Environment in Western China, The Ministry of Education of China, Lanzhou, 730000, Gansu, China
² Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, School of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, Gansu, China

^* e-mail: xjzheng@lzu.edu.cn

Received: 8 June 2011
Accepted: 16 January 2012
Published online: 30 January 2012

Abstract

In this paper, the dynamics of a spherical projectile obliquely impacting into a two-dimensional granular bed is numerically investigated using the discrete element method. The influences of projectile’s initial velocities and impacting angles are mainly considered. Numerical results show that the relationship between the final penetration depth and the initial impact velocity is very similar to that in the vertical-impact case. However, the dependence of the stopping time on the impact velocity of the projectile exhibits critical characteristics at different impact angles: the stopping time approximately increases linearly with the impact velocity for small impact angles but decreases in an exponential form for larger impact angles, which demonstrates the existence of two different regimes at low and high impact angles. When the impact angle is regarded as a parametric variable, a phenomenological force model at large impact angles is eventually proposed based on the simulation results, which can accurately describe the nature of the resistance force exerted on the projectile by the granular medium at different impact angels during the whole oblique-impact process. The degenerate model agrees well with the existing experimental results in the vertical-impact cases.