Dynamics of a clapper-to-bell impact

Church bells are exposed to severe loading conditions during ringing, which results in different damage modes due to material wear, fatigue loading, material deficiencies, different clapper-to-bell layouts, etc. As part of the activities of an EU-funded project called Maintenance and Protection of Bells (PROBELL), experimental investigations and finite-element simulations of the local contact between the clapper and the bell were carried out to study the wear-related damage to bells. First a simplified model was built to assess under the laboratory-controlled conditions the consequences of the repetitive impacts between a spherical body made from steel and a flat block made from bronze. After the results of the finite-element simulations for a simplified model were in reasonable agreement with the measured data a full-scale finite-element model for simulating the repetitive clapper-to-bell strokes was built. The simulations with the full-scale model were performed for variations of the parameters that influence the structural behaviour of the bell and the clapper: the clapper material, the clapper mass, the relative impact velocity of the clapper, the shape of the clapper, the clapper's pin support, the clapper's impact angle, the clapper's guide accuracy, the bell's sound-burp thickness and the coefficient of friction between the clapper and the bell. The agreement between the simulated and the measured results and the relation between the local stress–strain state and the damage to the bell in the contact area are discussed. ► Repetitive clapper-to-bell strokes were simulated with LS-DYNA finite-element code. ► Different arrangements of the clapper–bell dynamic system were studied. ► Numerical simulations were compared to experimental data. ► Numerical simulations correctly predict the trends of the contact-zone evolution.