Optimization of foam filled spot-welded column for the crashworthiness design

Abstract

To improve crashworthiness efficiency, aluminum foam has been adopted as one of new filler materials in engineering. Introduction of the foam material changes the crash behavior of structural component and make neces-sary exploration of more sophisticated design optimization methodology. This paper presents a crashworthiness design of foam-filled columns made from mild steels and joined by spot-weld. During the design optimizations, maximum crushing force (Pm) is set as the design objective, wall thickness , foam density and side length (continuous vari-ables) and also the number of spot-weld (discrete variable) are selected as design variables, and specific energy ab-sorption (SEA) is set as the design constraint. To formu-late the complex crashworthiness design problem, the re-sponse surface method (RSM), is used.