Portable, hand-held electronic devices have become commonplace due to their small size and light weight. It is inevitable that, on occasion, such devices will experience the shock loading associated with being dropped.

Accounting for this loading scenario in the design process, both analytically and experimentally, allows for the development of more durable products. The ability to reliably simulate drop-type loading reduces the dependency on experimental testing. Abaqus/Explicit has been used extensively to examine the behavior of electronic devices experiencing mechanical shock loading.

In the attached pdf document, a drop test simulation of a cordless computer mouse is detailed. A 1 meter drop event is simulated. The Abaqus/Explicit features that facilitate this type of modeling are discussed, including general ("automatic") contact, modified tetrahedral elements, variable mass scaling, mesh independent fasteners with failure, and real time filtering of time history output.