Scaling the impact of a mass on a structure

It is well known that the influence of the strain rate on the material response makes a prototype and a model scaled by a factor β and subject to scaled impact loads behave differently. This break down of the scaling laws has severely limited the use of models to infer the behaviour of large structures. In this paper, we describe a methodology which allows for the correction of the impact mass in a rational way such that model and prototype will behave nearly the same. The basic idea is to use another dimensionless basis based on mass, impact velocity and stress, rather than the traditional one based on mass, length and time. By properly operating this basis we analyse the axial impact of a mass on a strain rate sensitive double plate structure and the transverse impact on a strain rate sensitive clamped beam and we show that model and prototype became scaled after the correction procedure is applied.

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