Experimental and Numerical Crashworthiness Investigation of the Empty and Foam-Filled Conical Tube with Shallow Spherical Caps

This paper experimentally investigates the crash responses of the empty and polyurethane foam-filled conical tubes with shallow spherical caps under quasi-static axial loading. To find more details about the energy absorption mechanism, finite element methods is used to simulate the crush process. In terms of finding more efficient and lighter crash absorbers particularly, the energy absorption and specific energy absorption and load ratio have been considered. The influences of the tube geometrical and material parameters such as radius of spherical region, wall thickness, length, semi-apical angle and foam density on the energy absorption mechanism have been investigated. This study provides practical information for the use of thin-walled tubes with shallow spherical caps as energy absorbers in aerospace applications to design reentry of sounding rocket based on foam-filled conical tube with shallow spherical caps.