Crashworthiness investigation of conical and cylindrical end-capped tubes under quasi-static crash loading

Abstract

This research deals with experimental and numerical axial quasi-static crash tests on end-capped cylindrical and conical tubes. Axial quasi-static crush tests have been generated for end-capped cylindrical and conical tubes. Furthermore, in order to gain more detailed knowledge about the crash process, finite element (FE) simulations of the experiments have been performed. The explicit FE code Abaqus/explicit was used and the results have been validated by experimental data. The elastic–plastic material model was used for the aluminium tubes. In terms of finding more efficient (higher energy absorption) and lighter crash absorbers particularly, the energy absorption, E, and specific energy absorption, SEA, have been considered. The influences of geometrical parameters of the tubes on their collapse response have also been investigated. Finally, a multiobjective optimisation method is used to find the tube geometry which has the maximum energy absorption and specific energy absorption.