The Impact of an Elastic Sphere on a Thin Elastic Plate Supported by a Winkler Foundation

Abstract

This paper investigates the elastic impact of a sphere on a thin plate which is in continuous contact with a foundation. The reaction pressure is considered to be proportional to the local deflection (Winkler hypothesis). A solution technique, which was originally developed to analyze the impact of a rigid sphere on a viscoelastic plate, is modified for application in the present study. The contact force, the coefficient of restitution, and the contact time are computed for a wide variation in the two dimensionless parameters which are required to describe a given problem. For the limiting cases of impact on a half space and impact on a thin plate supported by a rigid foundation, the contact time computed here is shown to correlate with the calculations of earlier investigators.