Crushing behaviors of horse-hoof-wall inspired corrugated tubes under multiple loading conditions

Abstract

Inspired by the micro-structure of horse-hoof-wall, we proposed a series of thin-walled corrugated tubes and investigated their crushing behaviors under multiple loading angles. After the complex proportion assessment, the tube with circle vertex was selected as the optimal structure because its relative significance of the alternatives is 0.1306, up to 10.26% higher than that of other tubes at most. The best geometric parameters t = 0.54 mm, $\frac{D}{2}$ = 3.10 mm, A = 1.10 mm, and N = 8 were obtained by multi-objective optimization. In conclusion, this study provides some design inspirations for improving the crashworthiness of structures.

Keywords:

• Biological structures
• energy absorption
• complex proportion assessment
• oblique impact
• multi-objective optimization

Acknowledgment

This research was undertaken at Key Laboratory of Traffic Safety on Track (Central South University), Ministry of Education, China.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant no. 51775558], the support from the Natural Science Foundation for Excellent Youth Scholars of Hunan Province [Grant no. 2019JJ30034], the support by Innovation-Driven Project of Central South University [No. 2018CX023], the support by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Funding Project of Central South University in 2020 [Project number: GCX2020318Y, Project type: Mittal Innovation], and the support from the Shenghua Yu-ying Talents Program of the Central South University (Principle Investigator: Prof. Suchao Xie).