HIMANSHU RASAM
Product Manager
Impact analysis using FEA
Project : Individual
Role : CAD Design, System Ideation, Prototyping, Strutural analysis.
Summary
The experiment involved testing of various proposed automobile panels to a drop impact test to evaluate the highest strength to weight ratio of the materials chosen. The proposed materials were composite sandwich structures. The aim of the experiment was to design a new material for outer body of automobiles which would be lighter in weight but was also strong enough to sustain impacts
Design of the experiment
All the assembly required for testing was intially designed in solidworks and then fabricated in machine shop. The slabs of materials to be tested were built and impacted upon in ANSYS as well as experimentally in the lab. Total deformations, strains were recorded using strain gauges. Dents and failure of the various sample materials were tabulated.
All the impact tests were also done in ANSYS simulations using same boundary conditions and loading conditions. Results from these experiments were then cross checked with the results from the simulations to exact the factor of error. Using the polyfit function in Matlab, I was able to obtain a polynomial that gave the error function between simulation readings and experimental readings.
Finite Element Calculations
