Material properties of wolfram carbide established by using a simple indentation test

In this article a study of the fracture stress caused by indentation of wolfram carbide penetrators into steel blocks has been carried out. Experimental data was compared with simulations using the Nike-2D code and with numerical solutions from an analytical penetration theory. We found that the Nike-2D simulations and the penetration model gave good agreement with experiments, and that an inverse modelling technique can be used to find the material properties of the penetrator.