Crashworthiness of nested corrugation square energy-absorbing tubes with circumferentially cosine profile

AbstractWith the development of railway technology, high-speed trains have been invested in practical operation increasingly. The traffic accident that train runs at high speed will cause casualties and property losses. The energy absorption tube can effectively alleviate the damage of the vehicle in the collision process and protect passengers in the buffering process. In this paper, nested corrugation square energy-absorbing tubes (NCSTs) with circumferentially cosine profile and different inner structures are analyzed by adopting finite element (FE) simulation. The quasi-static compression tests and proposed theoretical model based on Simplified Super Folding Element (SSFE) theory are employed to validate the effectiveness of numerical models. The simulation results indicates that the crushing modes possess certain sensitiveness to cross-sectional conformation and the NCSTs present more stable and orderly deformation modes compared with non-nested tubes. The specific energy absorption (SEA) and crushing force efficiency (CFE) of NCST can be increased by 52.49 and 19.07% compared to ordinary corrugation tube, respectively. In addition, the tube with two-layers octagonal wall (SO1D) is selected as optimal structure because it is ranked first under cases of 40% by adopting the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. Finally, the sensitivity analyses based on SO1D are conducted. The results show that the parametric variation of trib and tout fairly effect on the deformation pattern. And increases in wall thickness t and section size of the middle wall Dmid will all result to increases in initial peak crushing force (IPCF) and significant variation on other crashworthiness criteria. This paper offers certain reference significance for the study of energy-absorbing structures.Keywords: Nested tubescosine corrugationcrashworthinessnumerical simulationtheoretical prediction Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementNo data was used for the research described in the article.Additional informationFundingThe work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 52105523, 52075553]; the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong [grant number ZR2021QE249]; the Hunan Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China [grant number 2021JJ10059]; the Postgraduate Scientific Research Innovation Project of Hunan Province [grant numbers QL20220042]; and the First Batch of 2021 MOE of PRC Industry-University Collaborative Education Program [grant numbers 202107ZCJG05, Kingfar-CES ‘Human Factors and Ergonomics’ Program].