Simulating soft body impact on glass structures

Abstract

Soft body impacts are fundamental loads in safety glass design and usually govern the glass composition and glass thickness. The resistance of these glasses against soft body impact and their safety properties after fracture are generally determined experimentally by an impact test, for example as defined in the European standard EN 12600. This paper shows that the relatively complex dynamics of a soft body impact on glass plates of different types can be simulated using transient, implicit or explicit finite-element methods in very good agreement with experimentally measured data. Based on research at TU Darmstadt at the beginning of the century, the calculation methods have been available for more than 10 years, also in commercial software. This paper additionally describes and validates a quick and easy engineering verification of the numerical simulations by means of a simplified analysis using equivalent static loads derived from a two-degrees-of-freedom (2-DOF) model. Both methods are now part of the design method included in the new version of the German standard DIN 18008-4 ‘Glass in building – design and construction rules – part 4: additional requirements for barrier glazing’.