Examining Dent Formation Caused by Hailstone Impact

Hailstorms pose significant risk for exposed building cladding materials. Steel sheeting is the most important cladding material used. The understanding of steel sheets behavior under hail impact loading is not sufficient for the manufacturing of hail-resistant sheets. With the purpose-built equipment, artificial hailstones of different sizes were launched to impact at steel sheets of different thicknesses and yield stresses as targets. A theoretical approach for the problem of predicting the dent size due to hailstone impact was developed and compared to the test results. The expressions developed in the theory can predict the dent depth before the impact, assuming the ratio between the dent depth and dent diameter is constant. The expression is not able to predict the depth of dents smaller than 0.75 mm and cannot predict whether the denting will occur or not. All hailstone sizes lead to visible dent on steel sheet of thicknesses 0.35 mm, 0.42 mm, and 0.55 mm. Visible denting was also obtained for the 0.75 mm steel samples with 45 mm and 55 mm hailstones; however, no denting occurred using 40 mm hailstones. It was found that the dent depth was inversely proportional with thickness and yield stress, while the dent diameter was found to be proportional to yield stress. As the yield stress of the steel sheet increased, the dent depth decreased for G300 and G550 steel. The dent diameter however increased as the yield stress increased. When the artificial hailstone shatters on impact, significant energy is lost and less energy is available to cause plastic deformation of the impacted material.