Prediction of energy absorption of extruded tubes

In this study, the FE crush analysis was carried out using LS-DYNA. It is an advanced general purpose nonlinear FE program. LS-DYNA is suited to handle the large deformations, sophisticated material models, and complex contact interactions required to analyze crash simulations.

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of five parameters on the energy absorption of extruded tubes. The five parameters considered were: imperfection location, cross-section, impact velocity, cutout size, cutout location, and impact mass size. It was shown that the circular and hexagonal extrusions had a high energy absorption efficiency compared to triangular ones. However, the triangular extrusions had the lowest crush peak force. Additionally, cutouts introduced in the sides of the extrusions lowered the crush peak force. Increasing the kinetic energy of the impacting mass was shown to increase the crushing distance, while also increasing the peak force slightly. Finally, it was further showm that cutout and imperfection location influenced the tube folding pattern.