Crashworthiness analysis and optimization of standard and windowed multi-cell hexagonal tubes

Abstract

Recently, multi-cell structures have received increased attention for crashworthiness applications due to their superior energy absorption capability. However, such structures were featured with high peak collapsing force (PCL) forming a serious safety concern and this limited their application for vehicle structures. Accordingly, this paper proposes windowed shaped cuttings as a mechanism to reduce the high PCL of the multi-cell hexagonal tubes, and systemically investigates the axial crushing of different windowed multi-cell tubes, and also seeks for their optimal crashworthiness design.Three different multi-cell configurations were constructed using wall-to-wall (WTW) and corner-to-corner (CTC) connection webs. Validated finite element models were generated using explicit finite element code, LS-DYNA, and was used to run crush simulations on the studied structures. The crashworthiness responses of the multi-cell standard tubes (STs), i.e. without windows, and multi-cell windowed tubes (WTs) were determined and compared. The WTW connection type was found to be more effective for STs and less favorable for WTs. Design of experiments (DoE), response surface methodology (RSM), and multiple objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) tools were employed to find the optimal designs of the different STs and WTs. Furthermore, parametric analysis was conducted to uncover the effects of key geometrical

Experimental analysis of specific energy with variable deformation volume under sphere oblique impact

“…The specific energy absorption is an important indicator describing the amount of energy that can be absorbed per unit mass of the contact materials [2,3,16,31,[33][34][35][36]. Then the normal, tangential and total values can be separately calculated as…”

“…To tackle this problem, it has been widely used the parameters directly related with the energy. The test piece, such as cylinder or tube with various section shapes [31][32][33][34][35][36][37], was compressed along the axial direction by the top rigid plate with a smooth velocity. Correspondingly, the parameters of total energy absorption (TEA) [1][2][3]16,31,35,36], specific energy absorption (SEA) [2,3,16,31,[33][34][35][36], crushing force efficiency (CFE) [2,31,[33][34][35][36], ratio of horizontal to vertical energy absorption [30], energy-absorbing effectiveness factor [37], etc.…”

Numerical study on a fractal-like multi-cell tubes with the Fibonacci helical section under axial crushing

“…To optimize the thin-walled structure under different loading conditions, a multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm was adopted, which has been successfully employed to solve the such multi-objective optimization problems. 35,36 Compared with other multi-objective optimization algorithms, the MOPSO algorithm can converge rapidly and has an even distribution of the Pareto frontier. 37 Based on the MOPSO algorithm, a metamodel-based multi-objective optimization (MMO) method employing polynomial regression (PR) metamodels was applied in this study.…”

Energy absorption characteristic and crashworthiness optimization design of VRB-VCS structures under manufacturing constraints

“…In 2021, Zhang et al 16 conducted the experimental and numerical studies of cross-sectional performance of circular hollow sections produced from Grade 316L stainless steel powder and parametric research on additional structural performance with a range of diameter-to-thickness ratios. Tran et al 17 implemented LS-DYNA to determine and compare the crashworthiness responses of multi-element standard tubes (ST) (i.e. windowless) and multi-element windowed tubes (WT), and employed the response surface method (RSM) and Multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) method to find the optimal design for different STs and WTs.…”