The ballistic impact performance of a multi-layer material with aluminum foam as the interlayer was investigated numerically in this study. The multi-layer composite material used in this study consists of three functional layers. The ceramic front layer takes the initial impact and converts most of the kinetic energy of the projectile to the energy dissipated in erosion of the projectile material and ceramic. The backing layer which the projectile comes in contact with is a laminated composite fabric which reduces the intensity of the impact by dissipating energy through various forms of damage. The presence of an interlayer in between the front ceramic plate and a composite backing plate has been observed to change the ballistic performance of the composite armor to a great extent numerically. On studying the effect of different inter layers it was observed that the aluminium foam makes the composite layer experience relatively less damage on impact when compared with a specimen without any interlayer. The studies were conducted keeping in mind the weight compensation in each case which led to thickness changes and various distributions of the layers over the cross section. Cause help. © 2017, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.