Spalling-like failure by cylindrical projectiles deteriorates the ballistic performance of multi-layer graphene plates

Ballistic performance of ultra-thin graphene membranes have recently been investigated at the micro and nanoscale. Two open questions that remain unanswered are, how graphitic plates behave when they can no longer be treated as a thin membrane, and how the projectile shape influences the perforation resistance of plates of varying thicknesses. Through coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations, we show that beyond a critical plate thickness,...