Abstract: Focusing on the process of the 53 type 7.62 mm armour-piercing projectile penetrating into the cylindrical ceramic/titanium/aramid three-layered composite targets, a study on ballistic performance numerical simulation was carried out. The simulation results show that the vertical incidence of projectile can cause cracks and fragmentations of ceramic layer, and eventually form pits on the titanium layer. The penetration depth of composite targets well agree with the experimental result, the relative error is only 9.4%. The percentages of energy dissipated by ceramic, titanium alloy and aramid layers are 83.77%, 13.77% and 2.46%, respectively. On this basis, setting the initial incident attitude angle θ₀ from 0° to 70°, it is found that the ratio of energy dissipated by ceramic layer to the total energy is the largest in the process of projectile penetrating into targets. Further analysis of the ceramic layer shows that with the increase of initial incident attitude angle θ₀, the maximum force of ceramic layer decreases. Moreover, the action modes of projectile and target vary with the initial incident attitude angle. Energy analysis of ceramic layer shows that, the action mode is basically consistent with the mass loss. However, when θ₀ is 30°, the mass loss of ceramic layer is large, but the dissipated energy is relatively less.