Crashworthy characteristics of sustainable thin-walled tubes: A study on recycled beverage cans

Abstract

Thin-walled tubular structures are widely employed in applications. The current study proposes an innovative cost-saving and eco-friendly thin-walled cylinder concept using recycled beverage cans. Axial compression experiments are conducted to characterize the crushing performance under quasi-static and dynamic loading. Besides, the polyurethane foam (PUF)-filled beverage cans are fabricated to improve the compression resistance and energy absorption capacity. Experimental results show that empty beverage cans behave as a typical Type-II absorber and fail by local buckling of the cylinder belly. The initial peak force increases with deformation rates while the highest mean crushing force is obtained at compressive velocity of 50 mm/min. In contrast, PUF-filled beverage cans collapse with a progressive folding process and present significant improvement in crashworthiness. Experimental results are compared with theoretical analysis and conventional energy absorbers to clarify the crashworthiness. In addition, the interaction effect between the PUF fillings and the recycled beverage cans is discussed comprehensively.

Keywords:

• Beverage cans
• crashworthiness
• energy absorption
• sustainability
• thin-walled tube

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Liu C., upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This present work is supported by the Jiangsu Government Scholarship for Overseas Studies Program and the Jiangsu Province “Double-Creation Project” Program (No. FZ20180090).