An experimental setup to study the collision force between brittle impacting bodies

A new experimental setup to study the interaction between two brittle bodies which can experience crushing,
comminution or fragmentation during impact is herein presented. The system consists of a free falling body
and an instrumented impacted plate, onto which an accelerometer is installed, lying on three force ring
cells. The recorded acceleration is decomposed into Intrinsic Mode Functions thanks to a Variational Mode
Decomposition technique to obtain relevant time-histories associated with specific vibration frequencies. The
mass participating to each mode is obtained by comparing the discrete Fourier transforms of force and
acceleration. Finally, the adoption of a high-speed camera provides additional insights into the interaction,
in particular when non-spherical bodies are considered. The results of a small experimental campaign serving
as a benchmark are presented and discussed.