Crushing behaviors of the thin-walled sandwich column under axial load. (February 2021) - Hou, Yubo
Abstract: Thin-walled columns have been widely used in the protective structure due to their excellent energy absorption capacity and lightweight property. The paper proposes a new design method of the sandwich column composed of a double circular column and a core column to enhance the structural crushing performance under the axial crushing load. The quasi-static crushing test is conducted to investigate the collapse process of the AA6061-O aluminum alloy sandwich column. The good agreement between the experimental test and numerical analysis validates the accuracy of the finite element model of the sandwich column. Then, the numerical investigations of the sandwich column and corresponding members are performed under the dynamic impacting load. The results show that the interaction effect of the sandwich column and corresponding members can significantly improve the energy absorption of the sandwich column. Furthermore, the effects of the geometrical characteristics of the sandwich column are further investigated on the crashworthiness. The results show that the peak height A and number N of the peak of the core column have an important influence on the energy absorption and distribution of the collapse mode. Moreover, the sandwich column with A = 4 mm and N = 14 has the greatest energy absorption capacity. In addition, the wall thickness distribution of the sandwich column plays an important role in energy absorption during the crushing process. Therefore, the results of this paper provide a new method to design the thin-walled structures with high energy absorption. Graphical abstract: Image 1 Highlights: A new sandwich column is proposed to improve the energy absorption of the thin-walled structure. The sandwich column has higher energy absorption that the double circular column and the core column. The geometrical parameters A and N have significant effect on the crashworthiness of the sandwich column. The thickness of the core column has larger influence on energy absorption than that of the inner column or outer column.