AVAILABLE DATA ON SHOCK-ABSORBING MATERIALS

The paper presents a survey of available data on shock-absorbing materials in order to collect information for possible later adaptation of the plastic deformation codes. Shock-absorbing materials and structures can be used as part of a transport container structure or pan of truck equipment. Several materials can be used as shock absorbers. An extensive survey of the literature has provided a great, deal of information on these products. It appears, however, that many properties are still not available, or are not accurately known, especially in the case of natural products. So, further investigation has been carried out to defme the required experimental procedures necessary to measure the missing properties. Three codes were selected: EURDYN, PLEXUS and SAMCEF. For code evaluation, a schematic container model has been considered to serve as a benchmark for the evaluation of plastic deformation. For shock calculation, the container was hypothetically dropped from a height of9 m. The EURDYN computer code, developed at the Commission of the European Communities' Joint Research Centre at lspra (Italy), was selected first since it was especially designed to handle dynamic (particularly plastic) problems. The SAMCEF computer code was developed at the University of Li~ge. As this code could not readily calculate the benchmark, since only a visoo-plastic flow model was available for steel, such a model was added to it. Contact with the CEA, France, led to the replacement of MARC by the PLEXUS code, which is part of the CASTEM system developed at CEA Depanement d'~tudes ~niques et thermiques. The results obtained using the SAMCEF program confirm those obtained with EURDYN. The PLEXUS results are more or less in between. It is concluded that the three tested codes gave qualitatively consistent results and confmned experimental results.