ABSTRACT
Impact is dened here as a sudden contact of a moving body with a motionless barrier, or with a body of much larger size. This chapter analyzes impact of objects with linear, piecewise-linear, or nonlinear characteristics. A distinction is made between local and overall deformation and their relative inuence on response is compared. For compact bodies (all three dimensions of comparable magnitude), the local deformations are important and may predominate. The latter is the case when such a body strikes a barrier and the contact area is small. With respect to tangential contact, three surfaces are considered: frictionless, rough, and no-slip, with only the second one having a specied friction coefcient.
