ON THE USE OF AN ELASTIC-PLASTIC CONTACT LAW FOR THE IMPACT OF A SINGLE FLEXIBLE LINK

An elastic-plastic contact law is proposed for modeling impact of a si ngle flexible link. This contact law allows continuous transition betw een contact and noncontact phases and is capable of predicting impact force histories. The impact model parameters can readily be obtained f rom the material and geometric properties. Excellent agreement with th e experimental results has been obtained for both elastic and rigid bo dy motion of the link, The impact force histories are also obtained an d compared for perfectly elastic and elastic-plastic impact models. It is shown that a perfectly elastic impact assumption is not realistic for most impacts of flexible links.