Fragmentation of a Circular Disc by Impact on a Frictionless Plate

Abstract

The break-up of a two-dimensional circular disc by normal and oblique impact on a hard frictionless plate is investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. The disc is composed of numerous unbreakable randomly shaped convex polygons connected together by simple elastic beams that break when bent or stretched beyond a certain limit. It is found that for both normal and oblique impacts the crack patterns are the same and depend solely on the normal component of the impact velocity. Analysing the pattern of breakage, amount of damage, fragment masses and velocities, we show the existence of a critical velocity which separates two regimes of the impact process: below the critical point only a damage cone is formed at the impact site (damage), cleaving of the particle occurs at the critical point, while above the critical velocity the disc breaks into several pieces (fragmentation). In the limit of very high impact velocities the disc suffers complete disintegration (shattering) into many small fragments. In agreement with experimental results, fragment masses are found to follow the Gates-Gaudin-Schuhmann distribution (power law) with an exponent independent of the velocity and angle of impact. The velocity distribution of fragments exhibit an interesting anomalous scaling behavior when changing the impact velocity and the size of the disc.

submitted to J. Phys: Condensed Matter special issue on Granular Media

References in corpus (3)

• Fragmentation of shells
• Scaling of impact fragmentation near the critical point
• Molecular Dynamics of Comminution in Ball Mills

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Fragmentation processes in impact of spheres
• Power law and exponential ejecta size distributions from the dynamic fragmentation of shock-loaded Cu and Sn metals under melt conditions
• Computer simulation of fatigue under diametrical compression
• Generic behaviours in impact fragmentation
• Emergence of energy dependence in the fragmentation of heterogeneous materials
• Experimental analysis of lateral impact on planar brittle material
• Crackling noise in three-point bending of heterogeneous materials