Deformation and Energy Absorption of Aluminum Foam Filled Square Tubes

Abstract

Modeling and numerical simulation of aluminum foam filled square tubes under axial impact loading is presented. The foam-filled thin-walled square tubes are modeled as shell wherein, foam core is modeled by incorporating visco-elastic plastic foam model in Altair® RADIOSS. Deformation and energy absorption studies with single, bi-tubular, and multi-tube structure with and without aluminum foam core are carried out for assessing its effectiveness in crashworthiness under the identical conditions. It is observed that the multi-tube structure with foam core modify the deformation modes considerably and results in substantial increase in energy absorption capacity in comparison with the single and multi-tube without foam core. Moreover, the multi-tube foam filled structure shows complicated deformation modes due to the significant effect of stress wave propagation. This study will help automotive industry to design superior crashworthy components with multi-tube foam filled structures and will reduce the experimental trials by conducting the numerical simulations.