Low-Velocity Impact Response of Plate with Different Geometries under Hydrodynamic Load: Experimental Investigation and Process Optimization by Response Surface Methodology

In this paper, an experimental and numerical study on the inelastic deformation of fully clamped circular, rectangular and triangular plates under the low-velocity hydrodynamic loads has been conducted using the drop-hammer machine. In the experimental section, steel and aluminum plates with three different geometries of circular, rectangular and triangular in different thicknesses of 1 to 3 mm were examined. Experiments were carried out under different levels of energy by changing the height and mass of the hammer and the maximum permanent transverse deflection was recorded as the test output. For better understanding the effect of effective parameters in these experiments, the Design-Expert software was used. In this software, the simultaneous effect of these parameters was investigated using the response surface method. The plate thickness, the standoff distance of the hammer and the mass of hammer were considered as independent quantitative parameters, and the geometry of the plates along with the material of plates was considered as independent qualitative parameters. The obtained regression model has a confidence level of 95% for output prediction. Accordingly, the p-value for the model is less than 0.05, which means that the regression model is significant. The values of R2 and R2adj was 0.9803 and 0.97131, respectively. The results of the regression model have a good agreement with experimental results. In all experiments, the standoff distance of the hammer was the most effective parameter while the mass of the hammer had the least effect on the response. The optimum conditions for each plate were also determined.