Crashworthiness analysis and optimization of standard and windowed multi-cell hexagonal tubes
Abstract
Recently, multi-cell structures have received increased attention for crashworthiness applications due to their superior energy absorption capability. However, such structures were featured with high peak collapsing force (PCL) forming a serious safety concern, and this limited their application for vehicle structures. Accordingly, this paper proposes windowed shaped cuttings as a mechanism to reduce the high PCL of the multi-cell hexagonal tubes and systemically investigates the axial crushing of different windowed multi-cell tubes and also seeks for their optimal crashworthiness design. Three different multi-cell configurations were constructed using wall-to-wall (WTW) and corner-to-corner (CTC) connection webs. Validated finite element models were generated using explicit finite element code, LS-DYNA, and were used to run crush simulations on the studied structures. The crashworthiness responses of the multi-cell standard tubes (STs), i.e., without windows, and multi-cell windowed tubes (WTs) were determined and compared. The WTW connection type was found to be more effective for STs and less favorable for WTs. Design of experiments (DoE), response surface methodology (RSM), and multiple objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) tools were employed to find the optimal designs of the different STs and WTs. Furthermore, parametric analysis was conducted to uncover the effects of key geometrical parameters on the main crashworthiness responses of all studied structures. The windowed cuttings were found to be able to slightly reduce the PCL of the multi-cell tubes, but this reduction was associated with a major negative implication on their energy absorption capability. This work provides useful insights on designing effective multi-cell structures suitable for vehicle crashworthiness applications.Citation
Tran, T.N., Baroutaji, A., Estrada, Q. et al. (2021) Crashworthiness analysis and optimization of standard and windowed multi-cell hexagonal tubes. Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 63, pp. 2191–2209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-020-02794-yPublisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLCJournal
Structural and Multidisciplinary OptimizationAdditional Links
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00158-020-02794-yType
Journal articleLanguage
enDescription
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization on 07/01/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-020-02794-y The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.ISSN
1615-147XEISSN
1615-1488Sponsors
This research is funded by the Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number 107.99-2019.02.ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1007/s00158-020-02794-y
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/