First of all the free student version of ANSYS includes every program and every feature, but the mesh sizes are strictly limited to only 128K nodes/elements for any simulation. I squeezed as many nodes and elements to the mesh as I could for the simulation by decreasing the armor/projectile sizes but you can still see how blocky and chunky the mesh is at close range, if you are planning on doing anything more complicated with the free version I'll wish you good luck in your adventures.

I also tried to render a mesh for the full 5 meter osmium rod but the progress bar did not move at all even after 3 hours, googling the issue I found out that any objects that are longer than a few meters will start having mesh generation and/or simulation running errors. (at least for ansys explicit dynamics)

Ansys also does not publish official prices for their licenses but I have heard numbers ranging anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands of euros/dollars for different license sets, so getting a proper license might cost you more than getting the right computer to run the simulations in the first place.

Now about the simulation time. If you understandably do not have pockets deep enough for some paid license then the simulation time should really only depend on how long you are planning on running a simulation for. The part where the projectile punches through the aluminum probably took no more than 30 minutes to simulate, but there was a lot of vacuum the projectile had to fly through. I would assume that an fx6350 laptop would have taken 11-12 hours to run the exact same simulation for reference, a ryzen 7 probably around 3 hours.

I don't mind answering questions but I also can't help you with everything. @IceFire

And I don't really see how something as light and weak as graphite aerogel would put up much of a fight against anything to be honest.

No worries. I dont see you as an wiki for things consurning the simulation software.

At the time i am running an fx 9590 on my desktop and a i7 on my laptop. Because of that i was just interessted about which processor that you use so i could gauge those times.

Consurning the aerogel. Its purpose is only defence against fragments from the stray shot that manages to hit. I use it as stated to fill the gaps between the major hull sections. My thinking was that it could catch small projectiles but as i do not know how it would behave under high stress and only knowing that it is very soft and hoping that i might act like kevlar in that if it gets kompressed it will bunch up and stop the fragment or at least slow it down enough that the inner hull or hulls can survive the shot. It might just get melted away when the fragment get heated up during the penetration due to stress.Thats what i intendet to simulate.

I didnt know that ansys was that expensive. But i could have imagind that as it is company/industrial grade software and knowing the prices of siemens software a price in the 4 digits was to be expected.

All in all i am quite happy with the information i got so far and the simulation was the cherry on top.

I have heard that using aerogel to fill the gaps between armor layers can help slow down plasma but that is about all I can say. Are we talking about slowing down plasma by 0.001% of its velocity or 10% is the real question. I would assume small solid particles to rip and tear their way through soft armor if we were to imagine said soft armor as some sort of foam.