I'm looking to make a test you strength machine. Currently thinking that hitting a wooden mallet onto a strain gauge will do it. Firstly do you think I will be able to read the figures from the strain gauge fast enough to find the peak, secondly what size of gauge will be required. A quick back of an envelope calc comes out at around 300N for a 1kg mallet but that sound low, commercial impact hammers seem to be rated 10x that and more. Any other ideas for measuring the blow or clever techniques?
use levers to reduce the impact
or
use a small hollow tube in the middle and a pressure sensor?
or
connect a sound sensor?
or
...
If you know the mass of the mallet measure its speed immediately before the impact and work out the kinetic energy?
...R
Piezo discs might work well and would be a lot simpler to implement.
I suggest you don't try to measure the force/impulse of the hammer blow directly. Instead, absorb the impact on something substantial which is free to move a small distance and then comes up against a solid end stop. Use this movement to transfer some of the impulse to a small mechanism from which you can measure the deflection. The amount of deflection would be determined by the amount of impulse transferred from the initial impact which would depend mainly on the hammer speed at the point of impact - but your sensitive measuring mechanism doesn't need to deal directly with any large forces.