Numerical study on impact resistance of novel multilevel bionic thin-walled structures

Abstract

Inspired by impact-resistant hedgehog spine and beetle's forewing, the thin-walled structures of simple hedgehog spine and multilevel hedgehog spine were designed. Numerical simulations of rigid flat plate impacting on thin-walled structures showed that the deformation coordination ability and stress distribution of the structure are improved effectively by the hedgehog spine section design. This makes the specific energy absorption of the simple hedgehog spine thin-walled structure just before failure increase to 9.6 times and 5.7 times those of the single-walled cylinder and simple spider web thin-walled structures, respectively. Furthermore, the sub-circle multilevel design was introduced to further increase the range of high strain energy density, and the specific energy absorption of the multilevel hedgehog spine thin-walled structure was 2.1 times that of the simple hedgehog spine thin-walled structure.