Instrumented drop weight impact test set-up design and assessment

Instrumented impact tests are useful to characterise the dynamic behaviour of materials as they provide continuous load, strain and deflection histories of an impact test. When these tests are used for low strength-to-weight ratio materials like concrete, considerable parasitic effects of inertial loads are manifested in the test records. With proper choice of the test parameters these parasitic effects can be minimised. Even with proper choice of the test parameters, one needs to understand the mechanics of such test set-up in order to evaluate and isolate inertial effects from the true material response. It is with this motivation that this paper outlines an analytical model to analyse the mechanics of an instrumented impact test set-up including damping and inertial effects associated with the tests and provides guidelines for proper selection of test parameters for testing tension-weak brittle materials. Good agreement was found between the test and proposed model analytical results.