Design, fabrication, and calibration of an instrumented drop weight impact tester

In this thesis, the complete design, fabrication, and calibration of an instrumented drop weight impact tester is described. Included in this description are all the sketches and drawings that are needed to duplicate this project, if so desired. This impact tester was built for around $23,000 less than it would have cost to buy and modify a commercial tester for the intended research application. This tester, as designed, was intended to be used in the field of impact location detection using artificial neural networks. Even though this impact tester was built for a specific research application, the design concepts that are presented can easily be adapted to a variety of testing needs. This impact tester was built using an non-working milling machine for a base. This provides a rigid, stable base along with a moveable X-Y table. The tester itself has the capability for drop weights ranging from 3.518 Ib up to 15.408 lb, and impact energy levels ranging from 0.6 ft-lb up to 45.6 ft-lb. Also, it is capable of impacting multiple locations of large plates with variable boundary condition sizes up to 12" x 24". Furthermore, it uses a computer program written using a data acquisition software package to provide output plots for the impact event, including the force and energy applied to the specimen versus time and the force versus displacement. Finally, initial experimental results obtained from this tester agree very well with those obtained from a commercially available tester, allowing it to be used in future tests involving intelligent material systems.