Thin-walled structures have been widely used as energy absorbers due to their significant advantages on crashworthiness and light weight. Relatively few studies have been reported about thin-walled structures with variable diameter along the longitudinal direction in a nonlinear manner. In this paper, a new functionally graded thin-walled structure with variable diameter (functionally graded tapered tube, FGTT) is introduced; and its crashworthiness is comprehensively discussed in terms of specific energy absorption (SEA) and initial peak crushing force (IPCF). The results show that FGTT is of great advantages on energy absorption over the conventionally straight/tapered circular tubes under the same weight. Then, a parametric study is carried out to investigate the effects of wall thickness, gradient variations of section and diameter range between top and bottom diameters on the crashworthiness of FGTTs. Finally, the multiobjective non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to further optimise the FGTTs for maximising SEA and minimising IPCF. The optimal FGTTs are found to have superior crashworthiness and great potential for energy absorber.
Crashworthiness design of functionally graded structures with variable diameters
International Journal of Crashworthiness ; 22 , 2 ; 148-162
2017-03-04
15 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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