Energy absorption of metal-composite hybrid tubes with a diamond origami pattern

Abstract

The metal origami tubes which are employed as energy absorption devices have been widely studied. Because the tubes can deform in a high-performance diamond mode (DM) with lots of creases turning into the traveling plastic hinge lines under axial crushing. However, for the composite origami tube, several large fragments rather than the traveling plastic hinge lines were observed in the axial crushing experiments, which means that the origami pattern cannot trigger the DM. Therefore, in this research, the metal origami tube is introduced on the outside of the composite origami tube, forcing the composite origami tube to deform with the deformation of the metal tube (i.e., the DM). Hence more traveling hinge lines are generated resulting in more fiber and matrix damage, which can effectively improve the energy absorption. The experimental results show that the energy absorption of the composite tube can be greatly improved by about 58.64% in the hybrid tube, compared to the single composite tube. In addition, the parameter studies of the hybrid origami tube indicate that it can deform in the DM in a wide range of geometric parameters.