Studying energy absorption in tapered thick walled tubes

In many engineering structures different energy absorption systems may be used to improve crashworthiness capability of the system and to control damages that may occur in a system during an accident. Therefore, extensive research has been done on the energy-absorbing cells. In this paper, energy absorption in tapered thick walled tubes has been investigated. As a practical case, studies have been focused on the crush element of Siemens ER24PC locomotive. To investigate performance of this part at collision time, it has been modeled in Abaqus software and its collision characteristics have been evaluated. Considering that the crash element is folded at time of collision, an analytical approach has been presented for calculation of instantaneous folding force under axial load. Basis of this method is definition and analysis of main folding mechanism and calculation of average folding force. This method has been used for validation of the results of numerical solution. Since sheet thickness of the crash element is high and may be ruptured at time of collision, some damage models have been used for numerical simulations. One of the three damage models used in this paper is available in the software and coding has been done for two other damage models and desirable damage model has been specified by comparing results of numerical solution with results of laboratory test. In addition, authenticity of the desirable damage model has been studied through ECE R 66 standard. To improve crashworthiness characteristic some attempts, such as use of metal foam and creation of trigger in suitable situations to reduce maximum force resulting from collision, have been performed. Finally though different simulation optimal crush element has been introduced and its performance and efficiency have been evaluated.