A Study of Mechanical Robustness of Portable Electronic Device Subjected to Mechanical Drop

In this Progress Report II for FYP 2, it covers all the literature review information, methodology, data, and results obtained in both FYP 1 and FYP 2 as per today. During FYP 1, the drop testing parameters and procedures, the drop test plan, the material properties and digitized component of the mobile phone (test specimen) using Renishaw 3D Laser Digitizer have been obtained. Since all the preparation is done, in FYP 2 as per Week 8, the model of the digitized components of the mobile phone are being filtered, removed of unwanted clouds, meshed, surface generated, and merged in CATIA using the Digitized Shape Editor. After the digitized components are merged, it can be used in ANSYS LS-DYNA for simulation, which will be done in the later stages of this project. Besides that, the physical drop tests for both flat drop and edge drop are also being done. The setup and results obtained in the physical drop test such as the characteristics and outcome of the drops, and the material failures caused by the drops are discussed in this report. There were various problems faced in doing this project such as creating the drop test plan and the process in digitizing the mobile phone components and merging all the components back to construct a solid mobile phone profile for simulation purposes. Furthermore, there were also various unforeseen problems happened during the planning of the physical drop test whereby the high speed camera is not available for use. Solutions are being proposed to deal with the above problems. The only activities left for this project are the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) testing on the failed components and the drop test simulation using ANSYS LS-DYNA.