Abstract Based on muti-cell thin-walled structures, construct variety of circular, octagonal, hexagonal multi-cell thin-walled tubes, energy absorption characteristics were studied. Used ANSYS to 12 different cross-sectional shapes of thin-walled tubes axial compression characteristics to nonlinear numerical simulation. The best cross-sectional shape was determined by comparing the energy absorption of different cross-sectional shapes. The thickness of inner and outer walls of thin-walled tubes and stiffened ribs were taken as design variables. Taking the strain energy density and peak force as targets, a response surface model was fitted and multi-objective optimization was performed. The optimization results show that strain energy density and compression efficiency are improved under premise of small peak force.