Energy absorption characteristic of bionic lightweight protective structure with curved tubes under impact loading

Reinforcing and toughening materials with light quality in engineered structures remains a challenge. In the biological tissues of numerous animal and plant species, efficient strategies have evolved to construct structures that have excellent mechanical properties. As a kind of biological structure with high-strength fiber, beetle elytron not only provides protection function for beetles, but also makes beetles light enough to obtain good flight ability. Because of these advantages of inner fibrous structure of elytron, the bionic investigation of beetle elytron has gradually become one of the research focuses in civil engineering and automobile anti-collision fields. In the present work, the honeycomb and tubes composed of fiber in the beetle elytra was analyzed, and a variety of bionic thin-walled honeycomb structures with curved hollow tubes were designed and modeled. The energy absorption ability of the bionic honeycomb structures with different types of tubes under impact loading were calculated by finite element software. The internal energy values and collapse processes of bionic structures were compared and analyzed at different crushing displacements. The parameter study, including wall thickness and impact angle, was carried out in the collapse time range from 0 ms to 8 ms. These results could be applied in developing crush-resistant materials in the field of automotive passive safety.