The nature of the elastic rebound of a hard ball impacting on ductile, metallic target materials

Abstract

The objective of the present investigation is to characterize the nature of the elastic rebound of a tungsten carbide ball when it is impacted against metallic target materials having a wide range with respect to hardness and elastic modulus. Ten target test materials were used and each of them was impacted by the WC ball at incident velocities of 5.5 and 7.5 m s⁻¹. The nature of the elastic rebound was characterized in terms of the coefficient of restitution (e) and also by the nature of and the means by which the crater formed by impact elastically recovered its shape during the rebound phase. The experimentally observed variation of e and the extent of crater recovery as a function of the test material hardness and elastic modulus and the impact velocity could be adequately explained on the basis of simple theoretical models.