Experimental and Numerical Crushing Analysis of a Novel Multibody Thin-Walled Circular Tube Under Axial Impact Loading

Abstract

In this paper, the energy absorption behavior of a novel multibody circular tube is investigated based on the experimental and numerical methods. To achieve the best design for the segments, the bell-end circular tubes, a multi-objective optimization technique was implemented using Python and MATLAB with four various objective functions such as absorbed energy, mass, peak crush force, and average crush force. Moreover, an arrangement of these bell-end tubes as a multibody structure would decrease the total length, obtain less capacity usage, and have better crashworthiness characteristics. The results elucidate an enormous decrease in the peak crush force and an increase in specific absorbed energy in comparison with the thin-walled circular tubes having the same mass. Finally, the energy absorption behavior of the optimal multibody circular tube was tested and compared to the obtained numerical results in single and double forms.