Multi-cell designs for improving crashworthiness of metal tube under the axial crushing load

Abstract

In this paper, a multi-cell design method with built-in stiffeners is proposed to improve the crashworthiness of metal circular tubes. In the study, multi-cell circular tubes with three different stiffeners (Line, Waved, Polyline) were subjected to compression tests under quasi-static load. The finite element model of the metal circular tube was validated by ABAQUS/EXPLICIT, and the geometry of the stiffener was designed on this basis. The results showed that the energy absorption of the multi-cell tube was significantly better than that of the initial tube. Further, ‘Waved’ and ‘Polyline’ are more conducive to improving the crashworthiness of the multi-cell tube from the geometric design of the stiffeners. Through the analysis of load-displacement responses and crashworthiness indexs, it was found that the more the number of ‘Waved’ or ‘Polyline’ (from 2 to 8), the better the energy absorption of the multi-cell tubes and the smaller the load fluctuation. In addition the effect of the number of stiffeners on energy absorption was also revealed.

Keywords:

• Crashworthiness
• energy absorption
• multi-cell tube
• stiffener
• wave
• polyline

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).