Crashworthiness analysis of circumferential sinusoidal hierarchical tubes (CSHTs): Experiment, simulation and theoretical prediction

Abstract

Many hierarchical structures have good mechanical properties, which can better improve the energy absorption characteristics and achieve lightweight. This article proposed a novel circumferential sinusoidal hierarchical tube (CSHT). Experiments and numerical simulation were used to analyze the energy absorption performance of CSHTs. There were four deformation modes: ordered progressive extensional mode (OPEM), ordered progressive in-extensional mode (OPIM), mixed mode (MM) and contraction mode (CM), among which OPEM and OPIM were more ideal. Geometric parameters could significantly affect the crashworthiness of CSHTs. The amplitude (A) and the number of waves (N) changed the cross-section shape to adjust the crashworthiness of CSHTs, while increasing the wall thickness (T) enhanced the strength of CSHTs and thus changed the energy absorption. Most of the deformation modes of CSHTs were orderly progressive mode with good stability, and the maximum value of SEA reached 18.95 kJ/kg, which was 106% higher than the minimum value. Finally, the mean crushing force was theoretically predicted based on the Simplified Super Folding Element (SSFE) theory. The deformation mode was OPEM when the values of A and N were small, and the predictions were in good agreement with the simulation results.

Keywords:

• Hierarchical structure
• crashworthiness
• parametric analysis
• Simplified Super Folding Element (SSFE)

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the Open Sharing Fund for the Large-scale Instruments of Central South University, the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2021JJ30853) and the Scientific Research Foundation for Young Scholars of Central South University (No. 202044019).

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Zi Yang: Conceptualization, Experiments, Simulation, Theoretical analysis, Data analysis, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing. Shuguang Yao: Supervision, Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing-review & editing. Chengxing Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Theoretical analysis, Data analysis, Writing-review & editing.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the Open Sharing Fund for the Large-scale Instruments of Central South University, the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2021JJ30853) and the Scientific Research Foundation for Young Scholars of Central South University (No. 202044019).