Effects of Wall Thickness and Crush Initiators Position under Experimental Drop Test on Square Tubes

Abstract

Crush initiators are the weakest points to reduce initial peak load force with significant energy absorption ability. The objective of this paper is to study the effects of square tube thickness and crush initiators position for impact energy absorber (IEA) performance on thin-walled square tubes. Two square tubes having thickness about 0.6 mm (specimen code A) and 1 mm (specimen Code C) were tested under dynamic load. The crushing initiator is designed around the shape of the tube wall and has eight holes with a fixed diameter of 6.5 mm. In the experiment, the crushing initiator was determined at 5 different locations on the specimen wall. These locations are 10 mm, 20 mm. 30 mm, 40 mm, and 50 mm measured from the initial collision position of the specimen tested. The impact load mass was about 80 kg and had a drop height of about 1.5 m. Using the simulation program of the LabVIEW Professional Development System 2011 and National Instrument (NI) 9234 software equipped with data acquisition hardware NI cDAQ-9174 the signal from the load cell was sent to a computer. By controlling the thickness of the thin-walled square tube, the peak loading force can be decreased by approximately 56.75% and energy absorption ability of IEA can be increased approximately to 11.83%. By using different thin-walled square tube can produce different best crush initiators position with the lowest peak load force.