Armour-Piercing High-Explosive shells contain a bursting charge which detonates post-penetration. This generates shrapnel and a shockwave, intended to increase the lethality of the projectile, but to what extent...
The simulations present the 12.8cm Pzgr.43 APCBC projectile (which includes a 595g burster charge) against plates of various thickness. The velocity and spread of the fragmentation is then assessed, along with the projectile residual velocity. This residual velocity is used to plot the expected fragmentation pattern for the shell at differing residual velocities, based off the 100mm plate results. The Pzgr.43 represents and APHE shell with a relatively large explosive cavity, with smaller capacity ones resulting in lower velocity shrapnel in a tighter cone.
Each red particle weighs about 0.5grams, which is similar to BB Buckshot (the smallest buckshot size). For any velocity band these particles could cause injury, with higher velocities being increasingly lethal. The pressure wave is not assessed in this simulation.
It should be noted that in reality the fuse is more hollow due to the tracer and booster charge, so would fracture more than shown here. Then fragmentation cone is also specific to this round at this velocity against armour of this hardness (~250bhn) at this angle. Many factors will influence the fragmentation pattern which arent compared here. The fuse delay may also not match reality, it was chosen to give a balance between computational time and visualisation purposes.
