Author(s)

P. P. Papados, R. L. Hall & D. Pelessone

Abstract

This paper addresses the interaction of multiple bodies impacting a deformable structure. It addresses the errors arising from using simplified versus more accurate representations of the multi-body impacting entities. In the past, researchers avoided the explicit modeling of the impacting bodies and resorted to the use of a crude pressure-time history representing the transfer of impulse (kinetic energy) from the impacting entities to the target. The reasons for these oversimplifications arose from hardware and software limitations. The drawback is that the errors arising from such an approach are extremely high and, in many cases, unacceptable. The advent, however, of parallel platforms and scalable software in conjunction with more sophisticated material models allow the researchers to approach the problem at hand within a reasonable turn-around time. In the current study, only explicit modeling of the impacting bodies will be addressed. The focus of this paper is to discuss the current methodology for modeling multi-body impact, the possible options of simplified versus non-simplified numerical simulations, and to provide a measure of error introduced by comparing the two approaches. Keywords: multi-bodies, erosion, error estimate, impact, dynamics, kinetic energy, constitutive laws, scalable software. 1 Introduction The interaction of multiple bodies impacting a target or targets of different structural and material consistency has been a subject of research for several

Keywords

multi-bodies, erosion, error estimate, impact, dynamics, kinetic energy, constitutive laws, scalable software.