A continuous contact-force model for the impact analysis of viscoelastic materials with elastic aftereffect

The elastic aftereffect phenomenon of viscoelastic materials under low-velocity impact has been widely observed in practical engineering. This paper proposes a new approximated solution for the Wang model, which has relatively high accuracy and simplicity, and is helpful for impact analysis of viscoelastic materials with elastic aftereffect. The approximated solution of the hysteresis damping factor is derived theoretically based on an approximation for the relation between the relative deformation and the relative velocity. The new approximated solution is verified by comparing with the exact solution and two sets of experimental data of previous studies. A series of numerical simulations are conducted to analyze the influence of the coefficient of restitution and the remaining surface-deformation ratio on the system’s dynamic response. The results indicate that the inverse restitution function is almost identical to the exact solution in the whole range of the coefficient of restitution. By comparing with experimental results, it has been proven that the new approximated solution has relatively high accuracy in simulating impacts with elastic aftereffect. The coefficient of restitution has more influence on the systems’ dynamic response than the remaining surface-deformation ratio. The described contact-force model can accurately simulate the impact of viscoelastic materials with elastic aftereffect.