APFSDS vs ABRAMS & LEOPARD 2 UPPER PLATE | apfsds critical angle 

Especially when you realise that at distances over a kilometre away these projectiles will have a ballistic trajectory leading to the reduction of obliquity, which would essentially mean that a round that can be stopped at almost point blank range will penetrate at normal distances for tank battles (1.5-2 km away).

Death? ahaha, they leave a small hole, if you don't sit directly on against it, you are not in any danger. In theory, you can put on a sapper's armor and then no fragments will interfere with you at all, in hostilities, various debris can be thrown on the tank, which affects the penetration of these shells, in any case, penetration does not guarantee the death of at least one person, not to mention the tank. ...

@@hibahprice6887 what nonsense are you talking about? The spalling alone is enough to kill the majority of the crew.

@@hibahprice6887 You clearly have not seen what the inside of a tank that's been penetrated by APFSDS looks like. Spalling and the fragments alone are enough to kill most of the crew, let alone if it hits ammo, fuel etc. What a stupid comment

​@@hibahprice6887 However, if the APFSDS penetrator was made from depleted uranium, its small hot fragments would ignite, which adds to their lethality or at least their nastiness.

"That one bounced off!"

“We didn’t even scratch them!”

500mm long apfsds? Holy shit thats big

@@reedman0780 that's what.. nvm

@@midnattsol6207 longer than a toothpick, shorter than a log.

They really need to model shattering for that damn upper plate before I lose my mind

@@williewilson2250 --- That's probably won't happen. I'm tired on that shitty game, thinking to uninstall it. But can't find any other similar game that have low system requirement.

volumetric sucks, if you just shoot something enough times with an aa gun it will have some bs ricochet and pen the front of any tank in the game and kill it

Except the t34 drivers hatch

@@Logan-dk8of Wait what?

Thanks, check my apfsds vs nera video out for composites!

I don't think the upper plates in either tank have composite armour.

@@stephencrompton4352 the Leo 2 has some, not a lot though. And I wasn’t talking about the tanks, more so the program he uses in general.

@@stephencrompton4352 not the plate itself, but, right behind the plate on the Leo

@@zooweemama911 nevertheless I do agree that it would be interesting to see a simulation on composite armour.

lol

150mm HE(or 155mm to be exact) would do less damage before the ricochet because at that angle the side of the projectile would hit the armor first not the tip where the piezoelectric triger is mounted...

@@Bialy_1 So many people in the comments don`t know that HE bounces. smh

@@Notmyname1593 too much war thunder, i guess lol

Kv2 go boom

The Chieftain approves of this

Code Brown.

aka either clenching their butthole enough to not shit for a month, or the polar opposite (sudden, immediate and full shitting of their pants)

or none... forever⚰

thats right

The abrams plate is 38.1mm thick, not 30, and is not UHHA. The leo does often come with additional plates on top but I've never seen the actual dimensions of them so I'm curious as to where you got them. But yes, this will no doubt improve the protection. The point of the video was more to address the general critical angle, on plates similar to the leo and abrams; there would need to be double the simulations if I were to use the exact dimensions of either

@@bellator11 thanks for the images, but yeah its relatively hard to tell accurately the thickness of the plate, especially cuz the drivers hatch is most likely thicker and/or rests higher on the hull

@@SYsimulations Drivers hatch is the same thickness as the combined thickness of the UFP + Addon armour, which is 45mm + 45mm NERA/NxRA according to a reliable source, so 90mm. I can also verify via 2AV plan drawings of the 82 deg UFP, which is indeed 45mm thick. i.imgur.com/c9BGHUe.jpg

@@bellator11 i pity the driver having to move a 90mm hatch out of the way to get in and out 😅 But yeah, the dimensions seem relatively correct

the front of Leopard 2A5 and above have an add-on armor on the front of the turret, it's that spike armor and all it is, is a empty metal box specifically to stop APFSDS shot from 120 mm or bellow, by making the rod unstable and thus lose most of it momentum. The box function is that the distance between the outer wall of the box and the turret armor it self is longer then the APFSDS-rod so the end of the rod will still be in the box-plating before it hit the turret armor with it's composite behind. at a different angle, then it was fired at.

@@heuhen what are you talking about dude, when it ricochets as shown in the video it goes straight UNDER the turret.

@@panteleymonschekochikhin-k1978 APFSDS shatters if it fails to penetrate, so if it """""bounces""""" then there will be nothing left to go into the roof of the hull.

@@cohu5541 well when it shatters it doesn't just disintegrate out of existence does it? The pieces of shattered rod still have to go somewhere. Somewhere meaning exactly between the turret and hull.

The armor in this simulation is the upper hull armor, basically the drivers roof. There is no additional armor at this specific location, just rolled homogeneous steel plate.

Yep, the Abrams UFP was designed during the late cold war intended to defeat Soviet era APFSDS which were shorter than Western perpetrators at the time. Nowadays, most tanks use longer and more potent projectiles that will have no problem against Abrams UFP. The UFP should still be effective against HEAT though as it should be steep enough that it doesn't detonate the projectile. But at the same time the most common HEAT projectiles come in the form of RPGs and ATGMs which can come from higher angles which defeats the purpose of the slope.

Sorta no. This simulation has a couple of issues. For starters, faster APFSDS is more likely to shatter, especially the longer and thinner rods now in use. Secondly, these rods are modelled with a flat edged tip, which creates a normalisation effect and "digs in" the rod to the angled plate. The aerodynamic tip designs of APFSDS will create the opposite effect on such extremely angled plates, increasing their chance to bounce.

That is why they are getting replaced. But at the same time drones are just so good at killing tanks armor doesnt matter much

@@shrayesraman5192 Drone still has to fire a conventional weapon at the tank, son. Armour still matters, it just needs to be in places it wasn't when these vehicles were designed. There's a reason the enhanced protection packages on Leopard 2s include hull and turret roof plating. Also, ERA and active protection systems got it covered.

@@AllThingsCubey I don't deny that's true. And that's good for Germany. But the US military had more experience than every other country combined by orders of magnitude when it comes to using drones to blow stuff up. And they are extremely good at it.

High ground is still relevant all those thousand years later. I mean air superiority is like the ultimate high ground, and it's key in modern warfare. If the enemy can bomb your tanks, that is verry bad.

@@jannikheidemann3805 obi wan Kenobi speaken the truth

True. Also the range is a factor. If a projectile is coming from a further range then it will be hitting the armour at a more advantageous angle . But also at a lower velocity

Also "out in the field" you don't shoot for weakspots, but in the center of mass, because the probability of hitting that weakspot is very close to 0 at ranges about 1-3 km

@@hetzersk7307 not to mention javelin missiles make sure to hit from the top and have a 2 stage shaped charge that can boof reactive plating

„As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero.“ oots

Yeah, even though a modern tank has an equivalent 1000mm of RHA or more, a 406mm shell would still obliterate that tank

My dear turkish leopard 2 😢

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-X6nZvDn6gRQ.html excellent evidence that if it works, the quality of the vehicle does not matter.

Corrollary of the famous saying : "Nothing can not be solved with the right amount of explosives" ^^

*Yes'nt*

bounced off the upper plate then went to the commander’s hatch and killed the whole crew ... yeah, war thunder...

@@boyteebah3794 your lying

@@radonsider9692 it did happen to me...

@@boyteebah3794 can't happen. Even if war thunder isn't that realistic. It has some rules

Sure. And the ground's not flat. And the target may not be precisely bow on. And a thousand other things. The reason this sim is valuable is that it shows exactly what can and cannot penetrate that armor, allowing decisions on both gun design and armor design. One presumes that the designers are aware that tanks are moving objects and that the world is not perfect ;)

Even at medium ranges the trajectory is not flat.

The whole scene isn't necessarily flat either as shown in the simulation. It's just caring about angles

But yeah this is all you can do. Or at least its where you start. Perfect controlled condition testing. From there anything can happen! You never heard this? "Even the best laid out plans go to shit when the bullets start flying!" So its only a base line to go by.

at the ranges where projectile can penetrate armor there is basically no ballistic curve

And also, the Abrams turret is one giant trap shot, so if the projectile hits higher it'll be entirely deflected into the upper thinner plate at an angle that'll make the tank driver have a very significant emotional event.

@@Narcan885 Very True.

I guess you can think the tank is on a shallow slope.

Well, both of these tanks were designed with the intention of being used from elevated positions, so it's probably safe to assume the designers decided they only needed to account for shallow angles on incoming rounds.

🤔

@@ceoofdazn7615 damn you, you fool 😂

@@ceoofdazn7615 lmao

Notice how the penetrator in the video doesn't have a penetrating tip nor is it depleted uranium

The sabot already disintegrated, little to no chance of going through the turret ring

@@xcr8ivex708 that’s still a fuck ton of metal going really fast straight into your turret ring. It will most likely jam the turret at the very least

@@deathdragon2283 Welp, i'd rather have my turret eatshit rather than my entire crew getting splashed

@@deathdragon2283 Nah, it will have lost a lot of energy due to the bounce, and once it bends, it will most likely shatter on impact without doing much damage. To this day, not a SINGLE documented case of an M1 Abrams being taken out via the turret ring exists. Not in real life combat scenarios, not in ballistics tests. It's just not a real issue.

@@xcr8ivex708 I agree, it’s most likely not making it through the turret ring, but I’d expect it to be jammed. A ls you said, a jammed turret is preferable to the crew being turned into a red mist

It is a pretty funny fact, indeed. It's even ridicolous to expect nato tanks to be used in perma-bunker turrett mode otherwise they'd get penetrated like tina cans. I wonder if they're also expected to carry the terrain slope with them as they're advancing. Well, guessing from the ukraine combat pictures showing tanks up to the turrett in mud, i guees so.

​@leroys.7119 agreed, it's really sad how tank designs have not advanced to the scale of how aircraft have

The Abrams LFP isn’t a solid slab of DU. That 700mm thickness is actually made up of a composite array that includes multiple spaced NERA plates. With the information that’s currently available we don’t know if the Abrams uses any DU in its hull. It’s said to be used in the turret cheeks in some manner, but the hull armor has been seriously neglected until recently.

@@deathdragon2283 plus, NERA needs space in between with other plates to make their magic work

Study trigonometry and then tell me how much of a difference in angle there is for a right triangle with one side that is 2 kilometers and the other side which is maybe a few feet.

no the tank isnt standing horizontal, the UFP (the armor plate being shot in the video) is sloped at an angle, the tank isnt horizontal, its just the UFP is sloped.

It may be so, but the point in the simulation is to show the critical angle of apfsds, with comparisons to the Leo and Abrams. Hence why the plate is 50mm for all tests

Same for air to air engagement nowaday too. He who sees first and shoot first and hits first usually win

the material properties and damage threshold values must be incorrect

This is a demonstration of what a 50 mm plate would look like if hit by a penetrator rod, it's not how the real thing works. heck, an abrams doesn't even have a 50 mm UFP, only leo, and even that has 20 mm composite plates with a 5 mm reactive layer in between, on top of it's UFP aswell.

In battle, every tank takes their turn to line up and take a shot too at each other, and they always only target one tank each.

The difference is not relevant in real life. A projectile isn't a laser. The precise angle of impact will depend on position of the two tanks, range, weather and sundry other factors.

And then theres people out there that fantasize about giant towering bipedal mechs fighting wars. Lmao

apfsds doesnt richochet, it shatters, this isnt warthunder

@@jeffzkiller3590 Watch the simulation, it's not long.

youre correct in saying that a balistic cap would have some effect, but it is more important for penetrators with a pointed core; these arent good against angles so a cap helps them normalise. On the other hand, a cyclindrical penetrator does not require a cap due to it already having a blunt nose (a blunt nose is the most effective design against angles surfaces)

Now that just sounds biased

@@NUNG89 completely WoT material with OP Russian tanks. At least Russian bias days of WT is long gone

The secret behind penetrating russian tanks is to un-KV the KV-2

Thanks! I use Abaqus

Cool! Thank you very much

That's the engineer software isn't it?

Shooting from a different elevation is probably not even necessary. Simply because of the existence of gravity, projectiles need to be shot up in such a way that it falls back down exactly where the target is

Did it really penetrate the turret?

@@maverick8697 yeah, loader got collapsed lung and a few missing fingers

@@63KF Still, was it an armor penetration or hit near an open hatch? There is a difference.

@@maverick8697 it did not penetrate the turret. It ricocheted and hit the CITV and sent shrapnel down the open loader’s hatch

A perfectly blunt projectile actually has the best angled performance due to the reaction forces as it contacts an angled plate. There are numerous studies confirming this. Another reason it isn't present is that some apfsds don't even have a penetrating cap, simply just an aerodynamic one (which is the case for this projectile) The final reason is that the vast majority of long-rod studies use simply cylindrical penetrators as they are easier to model and perform almost identical to capped ones

@@SYsimulations that was my point really, that a blunt projectile would have better penetration angles (at least slightly) than a tipped one, i do get the not modeling for demonstration of a solid core penetraitor. I suppose because it's accurate enough and these simulations were first being done when computers were much less powerful there isn't much reason to go to exactly accurate models.

@@ethrilswifthawk3769 yeah, id like to model with full detail, but for more detailed components like a nose and fins, the element shape and size has to be very small, increasing the computational time too much; the computers i have access too take too long for something like that

But only one is the master. M1 way more combat proven. No frontal weakspot and no armor in the bow.

@@UkrainianPaulie I will concede that the Abrams tank is one of the finest ever built. But NO WEAPON can perform properly without huge amounts of training.

Filters

That literally applies to any tank ever.

All simulations are simplifications, but good simulations are "good enough" that the results still have value. (the shape won't make that much of a difference)

Depleted Uranium Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot.

@@johnstevens1575 well DU Get it? Ok I'll go now...

That bounced off!

this would definitely penetrate as the projectile simulated is a lot lighter, shorter, and slower than svinets 1...is it really made of uranium-tungsten carbide? that seems unlikely to me

Most western APFSDS are blunt, they just have a pointed ballistic cap on the nose in order to reduce drag. The ballistic cap is to thin and fragile to affect the dynamics of penetration as it simply crumbled away on impact

Thanks, i tend to focus on armour theories rather than actual projectiles & armour; the issue with using real projectiles is that the accurate dimensions are usually classified, and the L/D ratio is very important, so mass & velocity isn't enough to model them on

@@SYsimulations i understand that, though, its a good starting point. Here is the T-72/T-90 front plate measurments. idk how accurate it is, but again, a good place to start. fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/MBT/t-90_armor.html#:~:text=Glacis%20is%20235mm%20thick%20with,vs%20KE%20%26%201.3%20vs%20HEAT. from what i find, on the M1A2 is: 'The glacis plate is only two inches thick and only equivalent to two inches steel armour at that angle (8° from the horizontal) - this will be 365 mm steel.' from a straIt up google search. Ill agree that things like the Leo2 and other EU countries seam harder to find, all i can find is its protection vs. specific munitions. i.e. Leopard 2 range from 1840mm - 2920mm vs APFSDS and 2780mm - 4370mm vs HEAT. (the numbers being equivalent to steel in MM thickness) Im sure that doesnt help much.

@@kellerweskier7214 thanks, but unfortunately a lot of the info out there is speculation, and even if the accurate array specification was given, finding reliable material properties for it would be hard too. Even there, that abrams info is incorrect, as the plate is 38mm thick, not 2 inches, so you see why it is hard to model real world armour. That being said, ido want to investigate the things youve suggested, and may do so one day, cheers!

The M829A4 has much higher velocity than that at normal temperatures. At 21 degrees C it's muzzle velocity is 1650m/s, -21C 1600m/s and -46C 1555m/s. twitter.com/delfoass/status/1248235527691620358?s=20

Using the parts that aren't classified, like in this case.

Hardened RHA isnt necessarily more dense, it is just harder due to heat treatment, and the accuracy of the simulation depends on the material parameters, which aren't as available for thick HHS unfortunately

theyre definitely better protected than the abrams upper plate/hull roof, but the composition of the composite armour is classified so that cant be said for the whole tank

Lol you know nothing John snow

Go look up how the metal shround around the turret makes the turret one of the best protectet turret of all todays MBTs

Just for the visualisations, yes, but I'll see how the contour plots look with normal stress in the future

It's pointless. The probability of hitting the exact same spot again is nearly impossible in realistic conditions. But it doesn't even matter because the fiirst hit would already penetrate it anyway, because the 50mm steel plate is just not strong enough to stop a modern APFSDS that can penetrate 700mm armor

To show that even a projectile this weak can still pose a threat

@@SYsimulations oh ok

Yes, the final impact shown would most likely have broken the projectile into a few pieces, but the angle it occurs would not have changed. A reliable fracture model for tungsten is hard to find but I will be implementing one in future tests...since this video, I make a somewhat realistic fracture model as can be seen at the end of my active protection video :)