Shock Mechanics of Portable Computers

A comprehensive tool to simulate and visualize the impact mechanics of mobile computing equipment has been devleoped. This tool is useful in studying the shock environment of portable systems under realistic conditions. Simulations of the impact mechanics of mobile computers reveals several interesting characteristics. The traditional single linear pulse is generated only in the extremely unlikely case of the object falling perfectly flat. Most impacts occur at corners, which lead to several shock pulses in quick succession. Each impact produces linear shocks along all three principal axes as well as simultaneous angular shocks. The worst case combination of large linear and maximum angular shocks occur when one of the faces of the object is nearly flat. Unintuitively, the first impact in most cases is not the most severe one in terms of overall shock. These observations can be used effectively to improve packaging and isolation design of mobile computers.