High-fidelity conical piezoelectric transducers and finite element models utilized to quantify elastic waves generated from ball collisions

Experimental studies were performed using high-fidelity broadband Glaser-NIST conical transducers to quantify stress waves produced by the elastic collision of a tiny ball and a massive plate. These sensors are sensitive to surface-normal displacements down to picometers in amplitude, in a frequency range of 20 kHz to over 1 MHz. Both the collision and the resulting transient elastic waves are modeled with the finite element program ABAQUS and described theoretically through a marriage of the Hertz theory of contact and a full elastodynamic Green’s function found using generalized ray theory. The calculated displacements were compared to those measured through the Glaser-NIST sensors.