Dynamic Responses for Viscoelastic Shock Absorbers to Protect a Finger under Impact Force

Abstract

This paper deals with dynamic responses of viscoelastic shock absorbers to protect a finger under impact forces by a sliding rigid object. The outline of the viscoelastic absorber is tube and the cross section of the absorber is in the shape of hollow semi circle. The sliding object having initial velocities collided with the absorbers. And the relevant restoring forces are measured using Levitation Mass Method proposed by Fujii. In this paper, we carry out numerical analysis of dynamic response for the viscoelastic absorbers under the same conditions with the experiment using LMM. The absorbers are modeled using a nonlinear concentrated spring with nonlinear hysteresis. This nonlinear spring is connected to the levitated block, which is modeled by three-dimensional finite elements. The experimental data are compared with the calculated ones using our proposed FEM.