The event of rigid solids impacting a viscoelastic body is encountered in many engineering disciplines. However, for this problem no analytical solution is available, making the proper design of e.g. protective bodies a difficult task. As a remedy, generally-valid solutions in form of non-dimensional response curves are presented in this paper, serving as reference for validation purposes or as design charts for the performance-oriented development of impact absorbers. Hereby, the problem of a frictionless rigid sphere impinging a viscoelastic half-space is investigated by Finite Element analyses. The general applicability of the results is assured by a transformation to dimensionless problem parameters. For this purpose, the analytical solution by Heinrich Hertz (1881) for the purely-elastic impact is taken into account. The chosen non-dimensional format leads to a reduced number of system parameters, allowing for a compact representation by so-called master curves. From these, optimal material characteristics are found for three different design objectives.     «

The event of rigid solids impacting a viscoelastic body is encountered in many engineering disciplines. However, for this problem no analytical solution is available, making the proper design of e.g. protective bodies a difficult task. As a remedy, generally-valid solutions in form of non-dimensional response curves are presented in this paper, serving as reference for validation purposes or as design charts for the performance-oriented development of impact absorbers. Hereby, the problem of a f...     »