Computer Simulation of Contact Forces Generated by Impact

Spring-connected lumped mass models are well-known tools for simulating the impact actions including forces generated at the point of contact which are responsible for localized damage to the target. However, the stiffness properties of the impactor would need to be known in order that such contact forces can be simulated with good accuracies. For most projectile materials, such information required for modeling is not available. A computational algorithm which forms part of a new modeling technique for simulating the contact forces is introduced in this paper. Cricket ball was used as the example impactor to illustrate the procedure.