Safety and Crashworthiness Analysis of Composite Tube Under Impact Loading

Abstract

Crashworthiness effects and axial collapse with damage propagation behavior of GFRP/CFRP composite circular hollow tube were investigated under dynamic axial crushing load. Energy absorption and peak force for the composite circular tubes mainly depends on the ply orientations and materials. In this study, focus on crushing analysis of circular tube under axial loading with different ply orientations and materials namely glass fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP), carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). In this dynamic analysis, damage initiation and propagation models are implemented in the finite element code of ABAQUS/Explicit. At the onset of study, numerical results are obtained using the progressive damage model and validated against the existing experimental study in the literature. During crash, the in-plane damage modes such as matrix cracking, fiber failure and shear cracking are modeled using failure initiation and propagation criteria. The out of plane delamination is modeled using cohesive surfaces. Numerical results were compared based on both energy absorption and peak force of these cases. The GFRP quasi-isotropic composite circular tubes exhibited the superior energy absorption and peak force than the CFRP.