Investigations on crush behavior and crashworthiness analysis of single and multi cell thin walled structures under axial loading

Abstract

newline The fast development in the more number of vehicles with upgraded innovation riding through the interstates would prompt the unaccountable accidents on the earth. The energy absorption capacity of vehicle structures is more important to reduce the effects of collisions and prevent from the major damages. Energy absorbing components are introduced in the vehicles to absorb impact energy during collisions and insist the safety in frontal collisions. Energy must dissipate to prevent damage and injury during collisions. To lessen the losses from impact, energy absorbers are utilized in scattering vitality upon distortion and collapsing to prevent the damage to basic pieces of structures. In energy absorption applications, the verities of energy absorbers elements are available and the thin-walled tubes are considered as one of the most effective energy absorbing systems since they retain the kinetic energy in a controlled way at the point of impact. Nowadays, the thin-walled structures are used as energy absorber in many applications due to their retention of high energy absorption in low weight. The main theme of this research is to investigate the crush behavior and crashworthiness performance of single and multi-cell thin-walled structures under quasi-static loading conditions. The simple and multi-cell thin-walled structures with different geometrical shapes like triangular, square, pentagon and hexagonal sections were fabricated by using Al3003 and SS304 metallic sheets in the workshop. The tubular structures have the same height, volume and average cross-sectional area are subjected to quasi-static axial loading conditions. Around twenty varieties of specimens were designed like simple and multi-cell or bi-tubular structures. Among the twenty verities of patterns, twelve were new and innovative proposed in this research. The fabricated specimens were subjected to quasi-static axial crushing at a loading rate of 10 mm/min. The three specimens with the same characteristics were examined and the best data derived from the load-displacement curves show the characteristics of the crash response. newline newline