FEA of lab scale drop test machine

Abstract

Drop testing is very important in many industries. In industries, the items face severe environmental conditions during their working life. These environmental conditions can be due to high temperature, high pressure, vibration, transportation effect and it can be shock effects. Drop testing is used for shock effects. First of all, theoretical modeling was done for the drop table to check that either it can survive the applied shock or not. Then a commercial finite element software ANSYS/LS-DYNA which incorporates the pre and post processes of ANSYS with the solver of LS-DYNA is used to investigate the response of the drop table. Highest shock produces when drop table hits the mild steel programmer (target) because of its highest stiffness. More the programmer is stiff, less the deformation would be produced and contact time will also be less. Due to this less contact time, less energy is transmitted to the programmer and more energy is transmitted to the drop table and high stresses are produced. Drop height has direct relation with shock and stresses produced. Shock amplitude keep on decreasing with decreasing the drop height.