Soft Body Impact Research Articles

Experimental and numerical characterization of input forces in glass curtain walls under soft body impact

Experimental and numerical characterization of input forces in glass curtain walls under soft body impact

Effect of Resin Coating on Soft Body Impact Damage of CFRP

Effect of Resin Coating on Soft Body Impact Damage of CFRP

Full-Scale Assessment of Seismic and Wind Load Performance in the Design of a Flexible Solar-Shading Double-Skin Façade

Cable-supported façades represent a novel approach in the design and technology of double skin façades (DSFs). This type of system not only offers flexibility in terms of exterior finishes, but also regulates the access of solar radiation, thereby transforming the appearance of the building in response to varying daylight conditions. However, the structural performance of these façades under wind, impact, and seismic loads remains an active area of research. The study is a groundbreaking work that experimentally evaluates the wind and seismic behaviour of these type of façades. The methodology used for the evaluation of flexible masonry facades includes laboratory tests analysing the individual capacity of the connections and materials of the system under standardized and non-standardized procedures. A full-scale experimental sub-assembly specimen of a representative module of the façade is also subjected to uniformly distributed pressures of wind load tests, as well as hard body and soft body impact tests. The setup considered the border conditions, tension loads, and actual materials. Furthermore, the earthquake assessment includes tests of full-scale specimens subjected to these demands. The results show up to 30% enhanced performance relative to similar systems reported in the literature. Furthermore, research findings facilitated the refinement and redesign of the system components, thereby validating the DSF case study.

Experimental and numerical investigation on glass panel subjected to pendulum impact

Glass panels are widely used in modern architecture, such as in building envelopes and balustrades. However, there is a lack of clarity in terms of their structural safety under soft-body impact. Therefore, a pendulum impact testing system is developed in this study to simulate the soft body impact and investigate the impact resistance of the monolithic glass panel. Two-degrees-of-freedom model and finite element model were built to verify the experimental dynamic response and progressive damage behavior of the glass panel subjected to pendulum impact. All results are in agreement with each other. The flexural strength of the glass panel is slightly higher than that of the code provisions, and the vibration frequency and damping ratio of the glass panel are 30.2 Hz and 3.8%, respectively. The dynamic responses of the glass panel and impactor increase with release height; further, energy dissipation occurs during the impact process. The energy loss increases with an increasing release height until the fracture failure of the glass panel. This study can help improve the understanding of the dynamic behavior of glass panels under low-speed impact.

Simplified Models to Capture the Effects of Restraints in Glass Balustrades under Quasi-Static Lateral Load or Soft-Body Impact

Structural glass balustrades are usually composed of simple glass panels which are designed under various restraint solutions to minimize large out-of-plane deflections and prematurely high tensile/compressive stress peaks under lateral loads due to crowd. Linear supports, point-fixing systems, and others can be used to create geometrical schemes based on the repetition of simple modular units. Among others, linear restraints that are introduced at the base of glass panels are mechanically described in the form of ideal linear clamps for glass, in which the actual geometrical and mechanical details of real fixing components are reduced to rigid nodal boundaries. This means that, from a modelling point of view, strong simplifications are introduced for design. In real systems, however, these multiple components are used to ensure appropriate local flexibility and adequately minimize the risk of premature stress peaks in glass. The present study draws attention to one of these linear restraint solutions working as a clamp at the base of glass panels in bending. The accuracy and potential of simplified mechanical models in characterizing the effective translational and rotational stiffness contributions of its components are addressed, with the support of efficient and accurate Finite Element (FE) numerical models and experimental data from the literature for balustrades under double twin-tyre impact. Intrinsic limits are also emphasized based on parametric calculations in quasi-static and dynamic regimes.

Numerical Analysis of TGU Windows Under Blast – GLASS-SHARD Outlook

The analysis of load-bearing capacity and the determination of blast protection levels for ordinary glass windows and façade components in buildings is known to represent a design and research issue of crucial importance. In the same way, reliable methods to address this issue are mostly based on cost and management expensive experimental investigations on full-size samples. According to the tendency of recent years, this paper presents some of major outcomes of Finite Element (FE) numerical methods and simulations that have been explored in the framework of the GLASS-SHARD research project for glass windows and facades under explosion or soft-body impact. The attention is focused on the analysis of a Triple Glass Unit (TGU), so as to address the blast performance of a rather ordinary glass window for buildings characterized by the presence of multiple laminated glass (LG) layers, on one side, and by the presence of two interposed gas cavities. The TGU blast performance is investigated in terms of load-bearing capacity of single components, with respect to variations in the input blast loads (stand-off distance R, charge W, etc).

The Performance of Vacuum Insulating Glazing Units Subjected to a Soft Body Impact

The Vacuum Insulated Glazing is a highly thermally insulating structure consisting of two (or more) glass sheets, separated by an evacuated gap, and sealed hermetically at the glass edges. An array of support pillars maintains the separation of the panes under the constant load of atmospheric pressure. The performance and durability of the VIG, in terms of thermal loads and atmospheric pressure, has been well studied and ISO Standards have recently been published (ISO 19916-1:2018 and 19916-3:2021). However, the mechanical performance of the VIG, especially when exposed to dynamic loads, has not been dealt with in the scientific literature. The goal of this work is to investigate the mechanical performance of VIG’s subjected to soft body impact and gain insight into the failure mechanisms of the VIG when exposed to dynamic loads. Measurements of the surface stress on the glass were performed, when the VIG is subjected to the twin-tire pendulum impact test, as outlined in the Standard DIN EN 12600:2002. Two VIG units and one laminated VIG unit were tested and the results were compared to numerical data of a monolithic glass pane. It was found that the VIG failed at drop heights much lower than that prescribed in the Standard. An examination of the glass fracture patterns highlighted an origin of fracture caused by the contact of pillar-to-glass.

Reduced order modeling of soft-body impact on glass panels

In the paper, strategies for reduced order modeling of glass panels subjected to soft-body impact are developed by means of dynamic substructuring. The aim is to obtain accurate and computationally efficient models for prediction of the pre-failure elastic response. More specifically, a reduction basis for the subsystem representing the glass panel is established using correction modes, being fixed-interface component modes that considers loading on the substructure boundary. The soft-body impactor is effectively modeled by a nonlinear single-degree-of-freedom system, calibrated by experimental data. Furthermore, a simplified and computationally efficient modeling approach is proposed for the contact interaction between the glass panel and the impact body. An experimental campaign was carried out to validate the developed models. In particular, the glass strain was measured on simply supported monolithic glass panels subjected to soft-body impact. Additional impact tests were performed to determine the dynamic characteristics of the impactor. Moreover, a detailed numerical reference model was developed to evaluate the discrepancy between the experimental tests and the results provided by the reduced order models. The developed models show good agreement with the experimental results. For the studied load cases, it is shown that an accurate prediction of the pre-failure glass strain can be obtained by systems including only a few generalized degrees-of-freedom.

Inversion for Constitutive Model Parameters of Bird in Case of Bird Striking

The strike between flying birds and airplanes results in the unacceptable losses of aircraft structures. The normal approach to evaluate the bird impact resistance is the combined full-scale experimental-numerical study. However, the simulation results from the current available bird constitutive models are usually not in good agreement with the experimental data. Establishing a reasonable bird constitutive model is difficult and significant to the simulation of the bird striking process. In this paper, based on the displacement measurements of an aluminum plate subjected to soft body impact, an inversion of the bird constitutive model is conducted by using backpropagation (BP) neural network. A comparative evaluation of this inversion model and other constitutive models is carried out, indicating that the proposed inversion model is more reasonable.

Experimental investigation of high strain-rate, large-scale crack bridging behaviour of z-pin reinforced tapered laminates

Significant research exists on small-scale, quasi-static failure behaviour of Z-pinned composite laminates. However, little work has been conducted on large-scale, high strain-rate behaviour of Z-pinned composites at structural level. Small-scale testing is often at an insufficient scale to invoke the full crack bridging effects of the Z-pins. Full-scale testing on real components involves large length scales, complex geometries and resulting failure mechanisms that make it difficult to identify the specific effect of Z-pins on the component failure behaviour. A novel cantilever soft body impact test has been developed which is of sufficient scale to invoke large-scale delamination, such that behaviour in Z-pin arrays at high strain-rates can be studied. Laminates containing Z-pin arrays were subjected to soft-body gelatine impact in high-speed light gas-gun tests. Detailed fractographic investigation was carried out to investigate the dynamic failure behaviour of Z-pins at the microscopic scale.

Performance improvement studies of the aluminium alloy plate with optimized properties under soft body impact loading

Performance improvement studies of the aluminium alloy plate with optimized properties under soft body impact loading

Experimental investigation of large-scale high-velocity soft-body impact on composite laminates

High-performance aerospace laminated composite structures manufactured from carbon-fibre prepreg are very susceptible to delamination failure under in-flight impact conditions. Much testing has been conducted at small length scales and quasi-static strain-rates to characterise the delamination performance of different material systems and loading scenarios. Testing at this scale and strain-rate is not representative of the failure conditions experienced by a laminate in a real impact event. Full-scale testing has also been conducted, but much of this is not in the open literature due to intellectual property constraints. Testing at this scale is also prohibitively expensive and involves complex failure mechanisms that cause difficulty in the analysis of associated failure behaviour. A novel test is presented which provides a simple, affordable alternative to full-scale testing but which invokes failure at sufficient scale and velocity to be representative of real component failure. This test design is experimentally validated through a series of soft-body gelatine impact tests using a light gas-gun facility. A fractographic analysis using scanning-electron microscopy was undertaken to examine microscopic failure behaviour, showing a possible reduction in crack mode-ratio during propagation.

Damage behaviour and failure response of aircraft composite structure by soft body impact

In the aircraft sector, Composite materials are becoming more popular for key structures for example engine Nosecones and fuselage panels. A bird strike is a serious threat that can cause significant structural damage. Using the explicit code AUTODYN, the current research focuses on composite structure finite element modelling and simulation of high velocity impact loads from soft body hits on composite structures. This study looks at how to use computational techniques for certification of an aircraft by initially proving the method's precision of bird hit on rigid target modelling and then extending the generated model to a more intricate situation. Because real bird hit testing is costly and time taking, it is proposed that simulation data be used in the early stages of design and for an aircraft certification of bird strike criterion under federal guidelines.

Low- and high-fidelity modeling of sandwich-structured composite response to bird strike, as tools for a digital-twin-assisted damage diagnosis

The constant requirement of aerospace industry to enhance the structural efficiency has driven to the usage of high-performance composite materials, either monolithic or sandwich. However, aerospace composite structures are prone to damage due to high-velocity impact events such as bird strike, hail impact, etc. These impact events can result in extensive damage including structure perforation, which will eventually degrade its post-impact residual strength. Therefore, the early detection of damage in composite structure is imperative to avoid catastrophic failure. This paper develops the computational models which predict the dynamic behavior of a helicopter composite sandwich structure undergoing a bird strike. The models are aimed to be used as virtual tools for a future digital-twin-assisted fault detection technique. Firstly, a high-fidelity (HF) FE/SPH model was developed in LS-DYNA, and it was validated against the soft body impact experiments. Afterwards, a computationally efficient low-fidelity (LF) model was developed and correlated with the high-fidelity model. It was concluded that the high-fidelity model can sufficiently accurately predict the strain history experimentally recorded by the FBG sensors, and that size of the predicted delamination area at the front face of the sandwich structure agrees very well with the experimentally observed delamination area. It was also shown that the LF model can rapidly predict the global dynamic response of sandwich panel under the impact loading, through the good agreement between the numerical strain histories with the FBG measurements. Consequently, the LF model can be used as a quick numerical guide for the identification of the loading condition, whereas the HF model can be used as virtual damage detector and estimator of damage extension before the scheduled inspection.

An investigation of impact resistance capacity of polypropylene (PP) added plasterboard subjected to soft-body impact

Plasterboard is one of the most-commonly used construction materials because of its low cost and easy installation characteristics. Although the low strength and fragility make plasterboard functioned as non-load-bearing components. Plasterboard walls are always required to satisfy impact resistance against impact from accidental body strike, hard-body impact from wheelchair, etc. during its usage. This study investigates the impact resistance capacity of plasterboards being subjected to soft-body impact load. Laboratory sandbag impact tests are conducted to examine the responses of plasterboard and PP fibre strengthened plasterboard system at different velocities. Detailed numerical models of plasterboards are also generated to assist the analysis. Different damage and failure modes are observed on the plasterboards when subjected to impactor strike at different velocities. It is found that the coupled deformation of plasterboard and sandbag leads to different impact load time histories from sandbag soft impact, which results in the different failure modes. The PP fibre strengthened board exhibits better impact resistance than conventional plasterboard. Parametric study is then conducted to quantify the peak central deflections under different strength and thickness variances on plasterboard. An empirical formula is then derived based on the parametric results for preliminary assessment of the plasterboard impact resistance capacity.

Numerical Evaluation of Slender Glass Panel with Complex Geometry Subjected to Static Load and Soft-body Impact

Current standards and glass codes of design practice require that glazing used in architectural applications has to be resistant to, in addition to typical loads, also accidental events, in particular human impact, without showing damage that is disproportionate to the original cause. A case study was performed of an indoor glass lantern in a public building made from slender two-side supported glass panels with a complex geometry (36 ventilation holes). The paper provides structural assessments and results of in-situ experiments including static loading and soft body impact. Results from numerical simulations of impact loading on the glass panels complementing the experimental results are also presented.

Calibrated Numerical Approach for the Dynamic Analysis of Glass Curtain Walls under Spheroconical Bag Impact

The structural design of glass curtain walls and facades is a challenging issue, considering that building envelopes can be subjected extreme design loads. Among others, the soft body impact (SBI) test protocol represents a key design step to protect the occupants. While in Europe the standardized protocol based on the pneumatic twin-tire (TT) impactor can be nowadays supported by Finite Element (FE) numerical simulations, cost-time consuming experimental procedures with the spheroconical bag (SB) impactor are still required for facade producers and manufacturers by several technical committees, for the impact assessment of novel systems. At the same time, validated numerical calibrations for SB are still missing in support of designers and manufacturers. In this paper, an enhanced numerical approach is proposed for curtain walls under SB, based on a coupled methodology inclusive of a computationally efficient two Degree of Freedom (2-DOF) and a more geometrically accurate Finite Element (FE) model. As shown, the SB impactor is characterized by stiffness and dissipation properties that hardly match with ideal rigid elastic assumptions, nor with the TT features. Based on a reliable set of experimental investigations and records, the proposed methodology acts on the time history of the imposed load, which is implicitly calibrated to account for the SB impactor features, once the facade features (flexibility and damping parameters) are known. The resulting calibration of the 2-DOF modelling parameters for the derivation of time histories of impact force is achieved with the support of experimental measurements and FE model of the examined facade. The potential and accuracy of the method is emphasized by the collected experimental and numerical comparisons. Successively, the same numerical approach is used to derive a series of iso-damage curves that could support practical design calculations.

Soft body impact on composites: Delamination experiments and advanced numerical modelling

Cohesive interface elements have become commonly used for modelling composites delamination. However, a limitation of this technique is the fine mesh size required. Here, a novel cohesive element formulation is proposed and demonstrated for modelling the numerical cohesive zone with equal fidelity but fewer elements in comparison to a linear cohesive element formulation. The newly proposed formulation has additional degrees of freedom in the form of nodal rotations which when combined with the use of multiple integration points per cohesive element, allows for delamination propagation to be modelled with increased stability. This element formulation is introduced with an adaptive modelling method, termed Adaptive Mesh Segmentation (AMS). To demonstrate its effectiveness under impact loading the new model is applied to a soft body beam bending test. This test, containing a delamination pre-crack, uses inertial constraints and results in a dynamic stress state when impacted by a gelatin cylinder.

Numerical Methodology for Aerostructures Hail Impact Damage Prediction

The two numerical approaches for modelling of soft-body impact in Abaqus/Explicit have been applied in this work for prediction of high-velocity hail impact damage in aeronautical structures. The applied methods are the CEL (Coupled Eulerian Lagrangian) and SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics), while the impacted structure is a metallic slat structure. Comparison of the CEL and SPH methods has been performed by impact simulations at a rigid plate, aimed to validate the applied material model, and by simulation of the slat structure impact. Two material models have been applied to study the effect of high strain-rates at the damage process in the metallic structure. The first is the standard isotropic plasticity model that defines material failure based on the value of equivalent plastic strain. The second constitutive model in the analyses is the Johnson-Cook model that includes the effects of strain rate and temperature on the material failure process. The simulations have been stable, illustrating the robustness of Abaqus/Explicit in these highly nonlinear impact cases. Compared to the CEL, the SPH method is computationally more efficient.

Material parametric optimisation of wing leading edge profile against soft body impact

The present study aims to optimise the material parameters of the 2xxx series aluminium alloy used in aircraft wing leading edges to improve its mechanical properties against bird impact. For this study, a bird model is established and validated with an experiment test from literature and with a bird strike test on the wing leading edge. The significant material parameters which affect the energy absorption characteristics of the wing leading edge is selected from the comparison of parametric study results. Then the selected parameters are optimised and validated with bird impact analysis studies based on Taguchi’s L16 factorial design of experiments combined with grey relational analysis. The significant improvement in the mechanical properties, i.e. yield strength, ultimate tensile strength, and tensile toughness of the new optimised aluminium alloy has been proved with a series of uniaxial tension tests. The new alloy shows average property improvement up to 24.44% in tensile toughness and 19.4% in tensile strength than baseline alloy AA 2024-T3.