Oblique crushing of truncated conical sandwich shell with corrugated core

Abstract

All-metallic truncated conical sandwich shells with corrugated cores (TCSS) were investigated for crashworthiness under quasi-static oblique compression using a combined experimental and numerical approach. Subsequently, multi-objective optimization design of the TCSS was also performed by adopting the algorithm of NSGA-II to achieve maximum specific energy absorption (SEA) and minimum peak force ($F_{\mathrm{P}}$). Compared with a monolithic shell, the TCSS exhibits much higher SEA and lower $F_{\mathrm{P}}$ under oblique loading, especially with its semi-apical angle set around 10° to 15°. The results provide valuable guidance for the application of truncated conical sandwich tubes in protective engineering, such as vehicle crashworthiness.

Keywords:

• Corrugated core
• energy absorption
• multi-objective optimization
• oblique crushing
• truncated conical sandwich shells

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11802221, 11972185 and 51875441), the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB1106400), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2016M600782), the Postdoctoral Scientific Research Project of Shaanxi Province (2016BSHYDZZ18), the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LGG18A020001), and the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (2018JQ1078) the Open Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures (MCMS-I-0219K01 and MCMS-E-0219K02), China.