Long short-term memory based modeling of heat treatment and trigger mechanism effect on thin-walled aluminum 6063 T5 for crashworthiness

Abstract

ABSTRACT Vehicle safety relies on the capacity of vehicle systems to decrease the likelihood of biomechanical injuries to both vehicle occupants and pedestrians. This can take the form of active or passive measures applied to the materials and their geometry in the event of an impact. Nevertheless, due to the nonlinear behaviour of materials and deformation, a distinct collapse process emerges that requires analysis; this analysis can be virtual or through experimental tests. While observed performance can be ascertained through experimental designs, executing such a design for every parameter combination can be time-consuming and costly. This study employs a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) to predict the energy absorbed and crushing force of thin-walled aluminium 6063 T5 tubes subject to different collapse triggers and heat treatments. The LSTM model is constructed using experimental data derived from experiments that consider trigger shape, area, trigger position, furnace duration, cooling temperature, and heat treatment soaking method. The LSTM model achieved a Root Mean Square Error (RSME) of 0.56 and 0.0025 for crushing force and energy absorption, respectively. LSTM proves to be a valuable tool for predicting results in nonlinear analysis, particularly in the context of crush behaviour. Also, a comparison of the LSTM and finite element analysis (FEA) predictive performance is presented.