Crushing characteristics of bionic thin-walled tubes inspired by bamboo and beetle forewing

Abstract

Bionic structures have garnered considerable attention due to their superior energy absorption capacity and light weight. This study proposes a group of bionic thin-walled tubes inspired by the microstructure of bamboo and beetle forewing. Experimental testing is conducted to validate the finite element model of bionic thin-walled tubes. The crushing performance of bionic thin-walled tubes and traditional thin-walled tubes is compared under the same weight. The bionic thin-walled tube with excellent crashing performance is further determined, that is, B-9-W. Then, parametric studies of the B-9-W tube are performed to reveal the effect of geometric parameters on crashworthiness characteristics. Finally, multi-objective optimization is carried out to seek the optimal design of B-9-W. Results show that, compared with two traditional thin-walled tubes, the specific energy absorption of the optimized B-9-W increases by 44.124% and 125.058%, respectively.

Keywords:

• Bionic
• crashworthiness
• energy absorption
• finite element
• structures

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51621004), Fujian Key Laboratory of Automotive Electronics and Electric Drive Technology (Fujian University of Technology) (No. KF-X18001), and Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (No. 2020JJ4184).