Behavior of hollow balls containing granules bouncing repeatedly off the ground

¹ School of Civil Engineering Transportation, South China University of Technology - Guangzhou, 510640, PRC
² School of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Lanzhou University - Lanzhou 730000, PRC

^(a) hum07@lzu.edu.cn

Received: 14 April 2013
Accepted: 27 June 2013

Abstract

An experimental study of the behavior of hollow balls filled with some granules (mung beans or millets) bouncing repeatedly off a static flat horizontal surface is presented. We observed that the bounce number of the ball is limited and decreases regularly with an increasing number of granules. Moreover, for two balls containing a different kind of granules, their bounce numbers are basically equal when the two balls have the same mass of granules. While there is no clear relationship between the first rebound height of one ball and the number of granules, there appears an exponential decay of the second rebound height with an increase of the granule number. Furthermore, a two-dimensional numerical model has been created to find out the law of the ball's rebound height and the dissipation law of the granule nested system. A generalized prediction equation to reasonably explain the law of the bounce number has also been proposed.