A numerical study on energy absorption capability of lateral corrugated composite tube under axial crushing

In this study, a comprehensive numerical investigation is carried out to evaluate the crashworthy behavior and the energy absorbing capacity of lateral corrugated composite tubes under axial loading. In this regard, a new lateral corrugated circle tube with a sinusoidal cross-section is proposed. To investigate the process of energy absorption, material model 54 in non-linear FE software LS-DYNA is applied for modelling axial crushing behavior. In order to validate the numerical simulations, the crushing results of hollow circular tube with uniform diameter are compared with available experimental data and a good agreement is observed. Afterward, crashworthiness analysis of lateral corrugated composite tubes is conducted by controlling the shape of the cross-section through the amplitude and the number of corrugations. The energy-absorbed performances such as specific energy absorption, initial peak crashing force, and mean crashing force of tubes are analyzed and discussed. Numerical analysis reveals that the lateral corrugated composite tubes have significantly obvious effects on the structural crashworthiness compared with ordinary circular tube under axial loading. Also, the results indicate that the geometrical shape of corrugation plays an important role in increasing the efficiency, controllability and failure patterns of corrugated tubes.