Axial Crushing Behavior of Aluminum Square Tube with Origami Pattern

Prescilla Christy Albert,Amir Radzi Ab Ghani,Ahmad Mujahid Ahmad Zaidi,Mohd Zaid Othman

doi:10.5539/mas.v10n2p90

Abstract

<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 宋体; mso-font-kerning: 1.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;" lang="EN-US">The study of axial crushing behavior is important in designing crashworthy structures especially in automotive applications. The axial crushing of thin-walled tube has better energy absorption capability. Thus, introducing milled geometrical shapes on thin-walled tube may improve the energy absorption performance. The improvement of the crush response is determined through the reduction of the Initial Peak Force (IPF) and the increase of the Specific Energy Absorption (SEA). This was done by employing origami pattern milled on the surface of thin-walled square tube which was investigated experimentally and numerically. The material used for the tube was aluminum alloy 6063-T5. The simulation results were validated by experiments which were conducted using Instron 3382 Universal Testing Machine and Instron Dynatup 8250 Drop Hammer Machine. The numerical simulation then progressed by varying parameters such as dimensions and configurations of the origami pattern on the square tube. ABAQUS finite element (FE) software was used to conduct the numerical simulation. The result of employing the origami square pattern on square tube is expected to improve the crush response by lowering the IPF and increasing the SEA. The obtained results were then compared with the conventional square tube where the origami pattern on square tube enhanced the crush performance.

Highlights

Thin-walled structure has been widely used in automotive field as energy absorbers due to its stable collapsible nature
This paper investigates the utilisation of origami pattern milled onto the walls of square aluminium tube in order to enhance the energy absorption performances by reducing the initial peak force and increasing the specific energy absorption
From the impact simulation results, it can be seen that pattern 1 shows the lowest initial peak force (IPF), a reduction of 36.85% compared to the square tube

Summary

Introduction

Thin-walled structure has been widely used in automotive field as energy absorbers due to its stable collapsible nature. The crumple area of thin-walled structure absorbs majority of the crash impact energy improving the safety of driver or passengers. The device must be able to absorb major energy of impact in an irreversible manner in order to design a collapsible energy absorber (Alghamdi, 2000). The conventional square tube is the most popular design for the energy absorber devices. There were studies about the square tube with dents and grooves as the energy absorber devices where the crush performance of this system has improved compared to the conventional square tube. Researchers come out with new idea and the square tube with origami pattern started to be introduced so as to improve the crush performance of the energy absorber as well as to improve the safety of the system (Song et al, 2012)

Methods

Results

Conclusion