Drop impact onto a cantilever beam: behavior of the lamella and force measurement

In this work, the process of drop impact onto an elastic surface (a cantilever beam) was studied. Different from previous studies which typically focused on the behavior of the elastic surface (e.g., deformation and oscillation), the focus of this work is to examine the behavior of the resulting lamella during the impact. It was found that the maximum contact diameter of the lamella in an elastic impact compared to impact onto a ridged surface is significantly smaller (e.g., 17% for impact at 2 m/s). The results were explained through an analysis of impact energy and the stored elastic energy in the beam. In this work, we also demonstrated how to use a cantilever beam to measure maximum drop impact force. It was found that a large natural frequency of the cantilever beam is needed for the maximum force measurement to produce acceptable values.