Numerical Investigations on Plastic Responses of Strain-Rate Sensitive Panels Under the Lateral Impact

Abstract

Abstract In the present study, the influence of the stiffening effect and the scale effect of material strain rate sensitivity on the lateral impacted panels is investigated. Rigid-plastic analysis for the collision scenario which fully clamped panels made of strain rate sensitive material struck by the blunt impact mass are conducted. A relationship is suggested to characterize the material strain rate sensitivity through the dynamic flow stress, defined by introducing a related factor n1 based on the theoretical analysis. Numerical simulations of low-velocity impact tests examining dynamic responses of clamped panels struck transversely by an impact block with a hemispherical indenter are presented. The dynamic behaviors obtained by numerical simulations are compared to reveal the influence of dynamic material characteristics on the impact behavior of steel panels. The great consistency between simulation results and predictions of the rigid-plastic analysis illustrates that the proposed rigid-plastic methods are effective to deal with the collision problem taking strain rate sensitivity into account. Moreover, the scale effect of the material strain rate effect on dynamic behaviors included the maximum permanent displacement and the peak impact force of panels is described quantitatively. The quantitative summarizations for the effect of the strain rate sensitivity are given. The maximum permanent displacement and the peak impact force are confirmed to be a power function of the related factor n1.