Sheets impact simulation for safety guards design: experiments and correlation for FE Explicit models of non-alloy steel

摘要

In the last few years, some international standards for the safety of machine tools have been developed improving the ballistic protection of safety guards. The uncontrolled projection of parts of work piece or tools can often cause very dangerous perforations of the safety guards. In such a way specific experimental tests like the ones conducted in EU, have assured the possibility to write appendices of ISO standards for safety guards design of machine tools. These tests are based on impact between a particular standardized projectile, which exemplifies an impacting fragment of variable size and energy, and a flat plate placed in the trajectory of the projectile. The penetration or buckling of the target determines the non-suitability of a particular material of a given thickness, for the design and production of safety guards. However, these tests have following limitations: they are valid only for: a limited type of thickness and materials, a perpendicular impact with flat plates of about 500 mm × 500 mm and when the standardized penetrator is a cylinder with a prismatic head. Another limitation is based on design of real safety guards: difficulties in taking into account curved design of guards such as the ones typically used in the spindles of machine tools. Moreover, it is very difficult to take into account innovative materials different from the ones provided by the standards. It is also impossible to consider projected objects whose geometry is not regular, for example fragmented parts of tools, broken as a result of a wrong manoeuvre of the machine user. The focus of this paper is to give an overview of possible material models usable for FEM explicit virtual testing of safety guards. Correlation between experimental penetration of international standards and numerical tests will be presented as a proof of the possibility to implement reliable testing virtual procedures. It is possible to think of exploring the uncertainty of the standardized tests procedure due to, as an example, non-perpendicular impact of the projectile on the safety guard, using simulations.