Impact of a spherical body on an air-inflated membrane structure

Abstract

The present work studies the impact of a spherical object on an air-inflated airbag like structure which is generated by internally pressurizing two circumferentially-bonded circular membranes, described by Yeoh hyperelastic model. During impact, the frontal membrane is in contact with the spherical body, and the rear membrane with a flat rigid substrate. The quasi-static frictionless contact problem is first solved numerically using variational approach, and then the static contact profile is perturbed to consider the dynamics during impact. The velocity of the impacting body is observed to be dropping rapidly during dynamic impact as compared to the quasi-static case. � 2023 Elsevier Ltd