Desarrollo de teoría sobre impactosmétodo simplificado de cálculo de impactos en estructuras

Laburpena

At present, calculating impact on structures is a difficult task to tackle. The reason for such difficulty lies in the absence of a global theory on impacts. The theories that have been developed up to now have two main drawbacks: • They are specific theories for a certain type of structure (beam theory, floor plate theory, etc.) • Mathematically, these theorems are so complex that their effective use in practical terms is impeded. The outcome of these two drawbacks is that currently the only way of calculating impact is by using finite element software. The use of such programs also presents three major hurdles: • There is no control over the results or any way of contrasting them. • They do not always converge to provide a solution. • There is no criterion for optimally designing structures against impact. This thesis addresses the problem of impact on structures and develops a new theory that enables impacts on structures to be calculated in a simple way. The three major contributions that this new theory achieves are the following: • It is of a general nature and therefore valid for any structure. • It enables the results obtained from finite element programs to be tested. • It allows for control over the impact such that it generates criteria for designing structures against impact. Throughout the paper, we compare the results obtained using this new formulation in different impact scenarios with the results obtained using finite element software and experimental trials.