Open Access

ARTICLE

Energy Absorption of Thin-walled Corrugated Crash Box in Axial Crushing

H. Ghasemnejad¹, H. Hadavinia^1,2, D. Marchant¹, A. Aboutorabi¹

1 Faculty of Engineering, Kingston University, SW153DW, UK
2 Corresponding Author. Email: h.hadavinia@kingston.ac.uk(H. Hadavinia), Tel: +44 20 85478864 Fax: +44 2085477992

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2008, 4(1), 29-46. https://doi.org/10.3970/sdhm.2008.004.029

Abstract

In this paper the crashworthiness capabilities of thin-walled corrugated crash boxes in axial crushing relative to flat sidewall boxes from the same material are investigated. In order to achieve this, various design of corrugated aluminium alloy 6060 temper T4 crash boxes were chosen and their axial crushing behaviour under impact loading was studied by developing a theoretical model based on Super Folding Element theory and by conducting finite element analysis using LS-DYNA in ANSYS. From the theoretical and FE analysis the crush force efficiency, the specific energy absorption and the frequency and amplitude of fluctuation of the dynamic crush force of the corrugated crash boxes were calculated and the results were compared with the reference uncorrugated model. It was shown that the corrugated crash boxes have advantages of a lower initial collapse force, a lower crush force fluctuation frequency and amplitude relative to a flat sidewall box.

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Keywords

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