Engineered modelling of the soft-body impact test on glazed surfaces

There is an increasing need to define the capacity of glazed surfaces under impulsive dynamic actions, such as those transmitted by a soft-body impactor as required by new regulations. The dynamic problem is first analyzed with a simple approach based upon an equivalent linear and non-linear 2-DOF system. The time-history analysis is complemented with energetic considerations that, with reasonable assumptions, can directly provide the maximum stress in the panel through the definition of an equivalent static load. Furthermore, an advanced FEM tool has been developed, which uses non-linear unilateral beam elements available in the library of a commercial software for structural analysis and, therefore, has a wide range of applicability. The comparison of the predictions from the proposed methods with results obtained from experiments and other advanced software, indicates the accuracy of the proposed approaches and their range of applicability.