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 single flexible link. This contact law allows continuous transition between contact and non-contact phases and is capable of predicting impact force histories. The impact model parameters can readily be obtained from the material and geometric properties. Excellent agreement with the experimental results has been obtained for both elastic and rigid body motion of the link. The impact force histories are also obtained and 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.