Topology optimization of thin-walled tubes filled with lattice structures

Thin-walled tubes filled with ultra-light materials have attracted much attention due to excellent energy absorption characteristics. With the development of additive manufacturing technology, it is allowed to manufacture structures with complex geometry shapes as new filled materials. In this study, complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) and discrete optimization algorithm were proposed to design and optimize the topology of thin-walled tubes filled with lattice structures. Firstly, the finite element model verified by experiment was adopted to investigate the influence of cross-sectional configurations and octet truss lattice filling distributions on crashworthiness of hybrid structures. The results show that the cross-sectional configuration has a greater effect on specific energy absorption (SEA) and the lattice filling distribution has a greater effect on peak crushing force (PCF). Then, COPRAS was used to sort the crashworthiness of hybrid structures with different topologies and select the optimal solution. It was found that C3-L4 structure had the best crashworthiness among all design schemes, indicating that the better crashworthiness can be obtained by filling the lattice in the four corner regions of tube or increase the number of cells in corner regions. Finally, the discrete optimization algorithm based on successive orthogonal arrays was adopted to further improve the crashworthiness of hybrid structure. It was found that the thin-walled tubes with different thickness had greater energy absorption capacity than those with the same thickness. Hence, the method proposed in this paper can become an effective way for topology optimization of crashworthiness.