Crashworthiness of Aluminum-Composite Hybrid Tubes

Abstract

To investigate the crashworthiness of hybrid composite tubes, two types of aluminum-composite hybrid tubes and one type of pure braided composite tubes were subjected to impact testing. The two types of hybrid tubes were made from aluminum inner tubes with either carbon/epoxy prepreg outer tubes or outer tubes of braided carbon fabric and epoxy. In the impact testing, outward-splaying crush-caps with different fillet radii were used. Furthermore, to catch the failure process of all types of tubes, the functions of progressive failure and delamination were included in a finite element simulation. The results indicate that the present simulation could provide good prediction to clarify different crushing behaviors for all three types of tubes. The results demonstrate that the specific energy absorptions (SEA) of the hybrid braided tubes are always around 26% to 31% higher than those of the hybrid prepreg tubes. The SEAs with smaller fillet radius are higher than those with larger fillet radius for all three types of tubes. Finally, the hybrid braided tubes have about 12% to 17% increase on the crashworthiness than the pure braided tubes.