Crashworthiness Design for Reinforced Thin-Walled Column under Oblique Impact Using a Magic Cube Approach

Abstract

This paper is concerned with crashworthiness design of a reinforced thin-walled column under oblique impact. To transform the failure mode of the column under oblique loads from low energy-absorption global bending to high energy-absorption progressive collapse, Magic Cube (MQ) approach, a systematic design approach, is employed to assist the design process: by applying time (process) decomposition, the original difficult nonlinear dynamic crashworthiness design problem is converted into a sequence of simplified linear design problems; by applying multi-domain topology optimization technique to the simplified linear design problems, the optimal configuration of the reinforcement is obtained. Numerical simulation results show that, compared with the original column with same weight, the optimal reinforced thin-walled column has higher energy absorption performance and lower initial crushing force under oblique impact.