Crushing behavior of metallic thin-wall tubes with triggering mechanisms due to quasi-static axial compression

Abstract

The current work is concerned with the axial crushing behavior of metallic thin-wall tubes containing prescribed through-hole triggering mechanisms. A square tube without any defects was studied in order to verify the accuracy and adequacy of the simulated crushing response of the tube due to quasi-static axial compression loading. The power law plasticity strain hardening model was utilized to describe the stress strain relationship for the metallic tubes in question. Implicit nonlinear finite element solvers in LS-DYNA were used to simulate the quasi-static compression behavior for the AA6060-T4 aluminum square tubes. The SHIMAZDU AG-X material tester was used to conduct quasi-static compression tests. The associated sensing facilities were used to measure the quasi-static crushing force and the axial crushing length of the aluminum square thin-wall tubes loaded at a stroke-rate of 10 mm/min. Furthermore, the quasi-static crushing behavior of square aluminum tubes with through-holes was also numerically studied. In comparison with the compression response of square tubes without holes, it was reported that an 11.7% decrease in the initial peak force for the square thin-wall aluminum tubes with a pair of circular holes was found. A modified circular-hole triggering mechanism located on the 1.5-mm pre-indented square tubes was also introduced, and this proposed design is found to be able to diminish the initial peak force by 14.6% when compared with that for an aluminum thin-wall tube without hole-defects.