Experimental and numerical investigation of a novel sandwich sinusoidal lateral corrugated tubular structure under axial compression

Abstract

Thin-walled structures have been widely used in crashworthy structural design due to their advantages of light weight, high energy absorption efficiency, long impact stroke and ease of processing. In this paper, a kind of novel sandwich sinusoidal lateral corrugated tubes (SSLCTs) is proposed. It consists of the outer circular tubes (OCTs), the middle lateral corrugated tubes (LCTs) and the inner circular tubes (ICTs). Sinusoidal function is introduced into the design of the cross-section of middle LCTs. The experiment and numerical simulations of the SSLCTs under axial compression were systematically carried out. It is found that the deformation mode of the middle LCTs has changed significantly compared with its compression alone due to the constraints of the OCTs and the ICTs. The study of interaction effect shows that the LCTs play an important role in improving the crashworthiness. The interaction effect of the SSLCTs in the present study is prominent and the increased value of energy absorption is up to 35.6% compared with the sum of the OCTs (alone), the ICTs (alone) and the middle LCTs (alone). Compared with the sandwich star-shaped tubes (SSTs) proposed in our previous research, the SSLCTs have larger effective crushing displacement, lower initial peak force and better stability in compression. Finally, the numerical simulation of the SSLCTs was carried out, and the influence of structural parameters on the crashworthiness was also analyzed in detail.