Experimental and numerical study of telescopic conical energy absorber under inversion process

Abstract

In this article, a new model of a conical absorber with an inversion mechanism in form of a telescope is introduced. The purpose of this article is to decrease the initial peak load and improve drawbacks and limitations in the inversion mechanism. When the tube is subjected to axial loading, each component is inverted and moves toward the next component. Therefore, the dissipation of energy is occurred due to the curling of edges and circumferential contraction in the tube wall. The inversion process of tubes under axial compression is simulated using the ABAQUS nonlinear finite element code. To verify the numerical simulation, some experimental tests are carried out. Moreover, a parametric study has been conducted to investigate the geometric effects of tube including end-capped, numbers of conical components, semi-apical angle and edge length of components. The results show that with appropriate selection of geometric dimensions of the new conical absorber has a significant role in reducing the initial peak load without a noticeable change in the specific energy absorption.