A Peridynamic Evaluation of Protective Coating Effects on Glass Bead Impact Damage in Zinc Sulfide

This study investigates the impact response of zinc sulfide (ZnS), a ceramic commonly used in aerospace applications as windows and dome material, subjected to moderate-to-high speed subsonic impacts from soda lime glass spheres using a non-ordinary state-based peridynamics (PD) framework. The soda lime glass sphere is treated as a linear elastic material whereas the ZnS target is modeled as nonlinear strain rate dependent brittle material by using a peridynamic implementation of Johnson Holmquist Beissel (JHB) model. Although ZnS offers excellent optical properties, its low fracture toughness makes it vulnerable to cracking under mechanical loads. This study aims to address the damage risk of ZnS and reduce it using protective coating materials. A comparison against the experimental literature data is done for uncoated ZnS impacts. Preliminary results show that the PD simulations for uncoated ZnS reproduce key experimental damage characteristics, including ring cracking and the overall morphology of subsurface fracture. Also, a reduction of damage is achieved by thin protective coatings, including silicon carbide (SiC) and alumina (Al₂O₃), both of which are promising candidates for enhancing the fracture resistance of ZnS. The peridynamic results accurately capture impact-induced damage in ZnS and evaluate the effectiveness of protective coatings, offering a robust computational approach for predicting fracture behavior under high-speed particulate impacts.