Crashworthiness research and optimisation design of sandwich multi-cell conical tube under axial impact

Abstract

A novel sandwich multi-cell conical (SMC) tube was designed and analysed by using Abaqus/Explicit. The performances of three different conical tubes, i.e., ordinary conical tube, four cell conical tube and SMC tube, were compared. The variables that influence the performances of crashworthiness were investigated. Then, according to this investigation the optimisation goal and design variables are determined. Optimal Latin hypercube design method was adopted to define the sample points for establishing and evaluating the surrogate model. Finally, a numerical simulation on the sample points was performed by utilising Abaqus/Explicit. The surrogate model with three different indicators, i.e., the specific energy absorption, the maximum crush force, and the crush force efficiency, was constructed by using kriging method and the simulation results. The accuracy of surrogate model was evaluated with four distinct methods. Finally, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II was utilised to optimise the multi-objective problem.