Impact Analyses of a Tennis Ball onto Water-Filled Containers

Abstract

Water-filled containers have long known for its structural characteristic of impact load absorption. This paper presents design of structures resisting to impact load resulting from a high-velocity tennis ball. One cubic meter water containers consisting of rectangular, cylindrical, and spherical water containers and water levels were studied for their stress distribution and deformation during maximum deformation period using finite element analysis in the ANSYS 15.0 software. The containers were modeled by using shell elements and made of elasto-plastic material of HDPE plastic. The filled water was model by using fluid elements. We found that as ball velocity increased, maximum von Mises stress increased. However, for post-yielding behavior, maximum von Mises stress approached a constant near yield stress of HDPE material. As ball velocity increases, deformation increases. When water level increased, maximum deformation decreased. For the rectangular container, when the water level increases, the maximum von Mises stress increases while maximum deformation decreases. For the cylindrical and spherical containers, when water level increases, both maximum von Mises stress and maximum deformation decreases. The fully-filled spherical water container had illustrated the superb capabilities to absorb and to dissipate impact load to the rest of the container structure.