Characterization of impacts of elastic-plastic spheres

Abstract

This work presents explicit dynamic finite element simulations of various impacts of elastic-plastic solid spheres with flat walls. Different analytical models describing the mechanics of the impact phenomenon are also presented. Elastic and elastic-plastic material models for the sphere and the wall are considered during the analyses. The applicability of these different models is demonstrated and their accuracies are investigated. Closed-form analytical functions are proposed to describe the relationship between the initial velocity of the sphere and the investigated contact characteristics for the given material models. Analysis is carried out to study the effect of the friction coefficient as well as the angle of impact for various cases.