The effect of thermal environment on axial crushing load of sandwich tubes

According to the classical Alexander solution for the axial collapse of bare metal tubes, a theoretical model is presented to predict the effect of thermal environment on the axial crushing load of a sandwich tubes with an arbitrarily fiber-reinforced layer between the two metal walls, based on a ring collapse mode. The mechanical property of metal walls is considered as a linear function of temperature change. A simple comparison, not considering thermal effect with the experiment previously obtained, is used to prove that the derived mean crushing load and length of the local folding mode are reasonable. The effects of wrapping direction of the reinforcing fibers in sandwich tubes and different thermal environments on the axial crushing load are investigated. The results show that the mean crushing load of a sandwich tubes gradually decreases as the temperature change increases, which must be considered in engineering designs.