Impact phenomena are ubiquitous in sports, musical instruments, vehicle collisions, ballistics and natural disasters. A branch of physics that deals with the forces, displacements and material failure associated with impact, is called as impact mechanics. The application of impact mechanics in design of engineering systems, can be termed as applied impact mechanics. This subject demands a thorough appreciation of complex processes involving contact interfaces, nonlinear deformation, fracture and fragmentation. This book presents impact phenomena as a focused application of diverse topics with a balanced treatment of theory, experiment and computation. In the first part, this book covers fundamental ideas of uniaxial and multidimensional impact waves generated during the contact of colliding bodies including a concise introduction to the relevant concepts of rigid body impact mechanics. In the second part, contemporary strategies employed in experimental, theoretical and computational techniques are delineated for applications to vehicle collisions and ballistics. This text has sufficient content to be offered for a single semester course; or, can be used as a supplementary reference for other courses on engineering design and analysis such as advanced mechanics of solids, structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, bio-mechanics, impact and vibration engineering, etc. This book will be of interest to senior undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students of all branches of mechanical sciences. Professional researchers and engineers will also benefit by acquiring a better appreciation of underlying impact mechanics principles and notions. This book is well illustrated with figures, tables, examples, case studies and exercise problems for rapid assimilation of key ideas.

About the Author

Dr. C. Lakshmana Rao is a Professor at Department of Applied Mechanics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. He obtained his B.Tech and M.S. from IIT Madras and Sc.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. He teaches and works in the areas of impact mechanics, constitutive modeling of materials, engineering mechanics, and piezoelectric sensing and actuation. He has participated in research and consultancy with several organizations. He has co-authored a book on Engineering Mechanics - Statics and Dynamics and on Modeling of Engineering Materials. Dr. V. Narayanamurthy is a Scientist at Research Centre Imarat, Defence R&D Organisation, Hyderabad, India. He obtained his B.Tech from Pondicherry University, M.Tech from IIT Madras and Ph.D. from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. His research interests and works include impact mechanics, hybrid structural members, flight interface structures, intersection joints, sabots, hold-release and ejection mechanisms and mass properties measurement systems for flight vehicles. Dr. K.R.Y. Simha is a Professor at Department Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He obtained his B.E. from Bangalore University, M.E. from 11Sc Bangalore and Ph.D. from University of Maryland, USA. He works in the areas of applied impact mechanics pertaining to fracture, friction, fatigue and experimental mechanics. He has participated in industrial R&D for automobile, aerospace, mining and machine tool designers. He has authored a book on Fracture Mechanics for Modern Engineering Design.