3BM9 APFSDS vs L15A5 APDS | 1960's APFSDS vs APDS Simulation | Armour Piercing Developments Vol. 4 

Soviets would have wrecked our ass.

Please do one with both of them against ERA

@@specialagentdustyponcho1065 It gets especially scary when you consider the best tanks available during the 1970s and the fact USSR outnumbered western tanks, even when it came to the newest, best designs. Early 1970s: T-64A, T-72 vs Leo 1, Chieftain Mk2, M60A1 Late 1970s: T-64B, T-72A vs Leo 1A4, Chieftain Mk5, M60A3 NATO’s only hope of stopping the onslaught of Soviet tanks were large number of ATGMs and tactical nukes.

@@specialagentdustyponcho1065 Nah. A lot more goes into winning a war than X number of tanks. The front is very short for one and many units would have to sit on other boarders Also consider very contested air and NATO ATGM infantry in cities and forests

Now do NATO sabot vs T62/72 Armor

T-10M would be a better option. By the time M103 was introduced, IS-3s were removed from frontline service, placed into storage or shipped off to the Russian Far East.

Is 3 aint surviving it unless it hits the frontal turret

The IS-3 was supposed to fight against the Germans in World War II, but the Soviet army won earlier.

​@argy0077 I think it's been proved that just because something is "withdrawn" doesn't mean it isn't actually being used in the Russian army

Indeed

Just like they firing at one another with rifles and tracers. But, when a crew served weapon is fired and it sounds different (M60, M249, etc...) you can see the enemy tracers shift towards that direction. Everyone knows to kill the suppression weapon.

I'll be revisiting it in the future :)

@@SYsimulationscan you do the rooikat apfsds since the calibre for apfsds is wierd its 76 mm

I'd really appreciate if you make a video like this

It would be interesting but would take a lot of work to calibrate the materials to match experimental results. I may do some of those materials one day

@@SYsimulations would be interesting to compare modern apfsds (like from the 80s) vs thin armored plates. In war thunder, they have it spalling a lot, which seems odd. Wouldn't it act like a bullet through paper?

Wich Metal Are Strongets?

Yes, it's much better at staying normalized on more extreme amour angles meaning it suffers less deflection and technically goes through less armor meaning it can go through thicker plates with the same kinetic energy

in practice no round "normalizes". Well, they do in the sense of "denormalization" which is the deflection part you're talking about. Although both of these terms, it seems, do not exist in literature, and are only used in trivial use to convey the same meaning. The downwards effect you can see on any round, it's the armor plate shearing, because of no supporting material being left anymore, it only happens near the back end of the plate (it's technically also kind of related to the overal size of the round too, how early this effect kicks in). That's how you achieve seemingly higher penetration value than you'd expect looking at just LOS thickness, because the round takes a "shortcut" at the end. Since APFSDS travels in a very straight line compared to non rod ammunition, this shearing effect only boosts angled performance, whereas full calibre round tend to deflect as they try to stay whole (APFSDS just breaks apart at the tip to stay on course, APFSDS works through eroding itself). So although the shearing of the back plate helps too with full calibre AP, it isn't as noticeable as it also in return deflects a lot, losing angled performance.

An APFSDS is longer so it has a higher moment of inertia. Note that the moment of inertia increases by the square of the distance to the center. An other factor is that an APFSDS is thinner so it creates less torque.

As far as I know, it is normal behavior for Soviet APFSDSs, but not because they are APFSDS, but because of other innovations, like geometry of shell, material of outer core and so on. Also I have read (can't guarantee if it's true) that when the angle of attack closer to 0 degrees (shell is perpendicular to the armor) than L15 has better penetration than 3BM9. I am Russian and I am Communist, so I am not biased for the favor of Western weapons :)

@@СмыслЖизни-с3м based

Err, no it wouldn’t penetrate Chieftain end to end at all. Source?

@@craigc4334 theres an image in the web showing a iranian chiefstain tank upper turrent armour being hit twice reportly by a kinetic rd fired from 115mm gun.

I think yes, but there was other steel apfsds the 3BM17 wich was a 3BM15 which had a tungsten plug, but the 17 didnt had that. But was longer than 3BM9.

Steel, an element that is famously able to withstand composites at supersonic speed./s

​@@corwintipper7317 Now mention 1 western tank with composite armor in the mid 70's

​@@scarface1ghost624 The prototype M1, Chally 1 and Leo2 and some composite add on armor on the chieftain and m60a1/a3

Johnson-Cook material models, which take into account thermal softening

@@SYsimulations have you validated the simulations with tests, like a normal bullet hiting a angled plate and a high speed camera? Since in some simulations the crumbling of the round into single elements is kind of weird. Or do you have any other way to tell the confidence interval of the results?

Wrong! Time is the reason everything doesn't happen at once.

Material is important too. Won't do much if the projectile is soft lead

Since the speed has in the formulla of kinetic energy the highest impact => this statement is very true.

@@MultiDivebomber right but a copper jacketed soft point from my 7 Mauser will go right through a high tensile steel grader blade whereas a larger diameter slower yet 50% heavier .308 Winchester only craters and puts a slight bulge in it. A 30-30 barely leaves a lead mark. It's more about speed than anything

@@MartinMizner "speed kills" is appropriate here as well as in cars. A .223 going 3200 fps drills a neat hole in sheet steel whereas a .22 rim fire will bulge the metal before perforating

APCBC or APDS?

"nothing" aint a good way to put it.

the fact that the Maus’ armour could potentially be penned by modern shells says something…

Nowadays it's not so much about stopping the rounds outright as absorbing or redirecting as much of their energy as possible to minimize their terminal effect. But yeah, the days of rounds bouncing off tanks are pretty much over.

In the front and right out the back. You would need over 500 mm of modern armor steel to stop even a 35-year-old projectile.

@@LOLHAMMER45678 no doubt it would still be funny to see

Nope, both of these are catastrophic penetrations.

Tanks are cramped metal boxes, and that small fragment of APFSDS was still going 800m/s after the armour. There's a reason the British during ww2, despite using very large explosive fillers in AP for warships, didn't even bother with it for tank AP, its really not required. If you can penetrate you are going to kill a crewman and trash some vital equipment at the very least, tanks don't have redundancy so they get knocked out. Things are totally different in War thunder of course.

Look at the velocity plot. the small fragments were going at like 400 m/s in a spray across the crew compartment . You can imagine what that would do to crew when its bouncing around a compartment let alone the mangled lump of penetration going at 800m/s

Well, you'd be able to tell where SY *_used_* to live by looking in the direction of the newly born star forming out of what used to be his computers heatsink.....

Yes, in reality they would be warmer, but not to an extent where it would make much of a difference. Its simplified in simulations where its just set to room temperature

@@SYsimulations also if you want to show the real progress on the characteristics of different ammunition types I recommend doing simulations for the T55As D10T2S gun You got everything from APHE(BR 412 series), to APDS(3BM-8) to APFSDS(3BM25) and HEATFS(3BK-5 and onwards). Even tandem HEAT ATGMS can be fired from the same gun. I do not know if the propellant charge would be the same for the kinetic rounds but I assume as much. That would be a really good gaige for the performance of different type of rounds fired through the same gun with the same amount of propellant.

I'll be doing smaller projectiles at some point in the future :)

I use Ansys and editted Johnson Cook parameters for the materials. Its not perfect but I think its at a pretty good state right now. What do you think isnt right? My L15A5 video compares the simulation to real word results and theyre almost identical.

It's gonna be like a nerd War Thunder duel.

140mm

Look up a picture of L15A5. It definitely has a sabot before firing, as it is a subcaliber round. APCR projectiles typically look somewhat like an APDS projectile that still has its sabot attached in flight.

As warriorcat says, this is APDS, the sabot isn't shown

Alright thanks for the clarification. I see that the L15A5 has a sabot, and the jacket is a different layer.

Irrelevant really. Notice the APFSDS remaining piece and tiny bits of spall have a much higher velocity ~800 m/s so whatever it hits inside the vehicle is very much game over as in this situation the driver is now dead and getting the driver's remains out of his seat and replacing him is quite difficult from inside all while the enemy is going to keep engaging you until you burn. So you GTFO. In a AFV once the armor is perforated it's over. An IFV/APC sure if the round passes through the troop compartment it could continue in action as it has a much larger volume for the spalling to hit or pass through irrelevant equipment or space to the function of the vehicle. If you classify the potential troops in the compartment as non essential.

Doesn't really matter since tank crews are trained to bail at first penetration. If something can pierce your tank once it can and will do it again.

Being killed in a tank has to be one of the worst ways to die if you aren't killed outright...

They are Al

Nope, it can go through 140mm at 2k; just Google 3bm9 penetration. 80mm would be so little...a 17pdr from ww2 can go through that

@@SYsimulations My friend, my father is a colonel in the Soviet Army, served in East Germany (DDR) and was a military adviser in Iraq(1981 and 1987-1988) and Yemen. I have at hand special documentation for these APFSDS (3БМ9, 3БМ12, 3БМ15, 3БМ22, 3БМ26, 3БМ42), with an inscription "Для служебного пользования" ("For official use"). If you are interested in something, then ask, I will answer in detail.

@@SYsimulations Oh, I'm sorry, I took out the document and looked at the 3БМ9 data, mass-5,67 kg(3,62kg), muzzle energy- 9200 kJ armor penetration at an angle of 0 degress- 245mm, at an angle of 30 degress- 210 mm, 35 degress- 200 mm, 45 degress- 180mm, 60 degress-140mm, 72 degress-80mm.

They use both monolithic and slugs, with this being the first 125mm apfsds. The rod shattering will only be visible when a longer portion of it comes through the back of the plate

@@SYsimulations the monolithic ones are very rarely deployed, however that is true the early rods shattered when they essentially slapped the armour

This is the ultimate version of the old (L15) versus the worst example of the new. The innate value of APDSFS is on show; 3BM9 is an awful, cheap-out thing (they knew how to make composite steel/Wh darts, but 'expensive') that wastes the gun's potential, yet at 60° it's close to equalling the performance of a highly refined, Wh-heavy old-school APDS projectile. At lower obliques it's a rather different story, at 2km the L15 is ~33% better in perpendicular impact. Roll on the mid-70s and all-steel darts are gone and BM-15 is the new standard and modestly better than L15 in every way (or so they said, I'm guessing many a Soviet Lt. Col. lined his pockets whilst handing out BM-15 stencil kits to BM-9 equipped tankers 😮)

thats probably just a spin induced by travel the fins on apfsds are made to counter the rotation since those types of perpetrators lose a great deal of penetration from the rotation thats why most mbt guns use a smooth bore barrel unless they have some full caliber shells that its designed to fire

With engineering software called Ansys

Said human would be reduced to a red puddle

1969 production and fielding. 1970 production.

@@belgianfried T64A came into production in 1973... T72 in 1974... so in 1970, there was no tank with 125mm gun that could use these rounds... BM-9 in 1970 was pretty much a testing projectile..

@@JaM-R2TR4 My source is Kubinka Tank Museum. First Object 172 was created in 1968, Object 172M (T-72) was accepted into service on December of 1972. So you are wrong, actually.

@@belgianfried yes, but those were prototype tanks... first serial produced tank with 125mm gun was T64A in 1973... so there is no point in comparing 1960 Chieftain against projectile that would not be in use till 1973-74... and FYI - T64A was problematic, with some technical issues, so Soviet Army got functional tank with T72 in 1974-1975 when first 200 were manufactured..

@@JaM-R2TR4 Completely incorrect. "T-72: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" states that the T-64A was in production (but not service) by 1968. The same source, plus "T-72/90: EXPERIENCE IN CREATING DOMESTIC MAIN BATTLE TANKS" also states that the T-72 was already in serial production by December 1972. So?

Not true notice how the large fragments of the APFSDS projectile don’t shatter but rather perforate at ~1000ms once penetration has occurred. That allows it to have far greater lethality than the APDS who inefficiently expends all its kinetic energy simply having to overcome shell normalisation to the point that once penetration finally does occur there’s nothing behind the shell as shown by the animation.

The L15A5 was only used on one single tank, the chieftain...all other NATO tanks couldn't penetrate this target, or the T64/72's main armour. APDS was not good enough for 105mm cannons and APFSDS was very accurate afaik

@@SYsimulations The T64 has composite armor , not this plate you shot . Rated at 440mm for kinetic and the T62 has 102mm at 60° . As far as I know , wich front plate should that be you shot at ?

@@SYsimulations NATO was relying on HEAT rounds at that time (and Soviets as well, as these early APFSDS rounds were not that accurate).. of course, against composite armors HEAT became obsolete, so they switched to APFSDS rounds as well in late 70'ties, and in general 105mm APFSDS rounds were at the same level as 125mm APFSDS Soviets had at the time... 120mm then outperformed them completely...

@@5co756 The plate isnt from any specific tank, just a 140mm target plate to compare their maximum penetration. The T64's composite array is stronger thant his plate which is why im saying APDS wouldnt be enough to deal with T64/72s reliably

@@JaM-R2TR4 I know HEAT was relied upon but like you say, it was insufficient against T64/72 composite arrays. Apologies if APFSDS is actually inaccurate, but my general point still stands, NATO was insufficiently armed between the mid-60's and 70's to deal with the new soviet MBTs, which could easily deal with all of their tanks

The shrapnel from penetrating will harm the crew and damage internal components, or ignite the ammunition or fuel

It's not apcbc, its apds; L15A5 is just designed like that. There are plenty of images of it

Это не игра, это симулятор "Ansys"

🤨

They still do, but slower than rifled projectiles. The fins literally have chamfers on them to induce a spin