Welcome to Journal of Automotive Safety and Energy,
汽车安全与节能学报

Journal Of Automotive Safety And Energy ›› 2012, Vol. 3 ›› Issue (4): 326-331.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8484.2012.04.005

• Automotive Safety • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Energy absorption characteristic simulation of cone thin-walled metal tube research in the automotive collision

ZOU Meng 1,2, WEI Cangang1, XU Shucai2, ZHAO Zhenjia1, ZHANG Jinhuan2   

  1. 1. Key Laboratory for Bionics Engineering of Education Ministry, Jilin University, Changchun 130022, China;
    2. State Key Lab of Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
  • Online:2012-12-25 Published:2013-01-05

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Abstract: Thin-walled metal tubes are structural parts for vehicle security when automotive collisions occur.
This paper investigates the energy absorption characteristics of an aluminum alloy LD2 metallic thin-walled
tube with different tapers and cell numbers to optimize the design of the tube. Hypermesh and Ls-Dyna soft
wares were used to simulate the dynamic loads in axial and deflective directions with Initial Peak Load (IPL) and
Specific Energy Absorption (SEA) characterizing the energy absorption characteristics. The results show that
the IPLs of the single-, double-, and fourfold-cell conical tubes reduce with increasing taper, with the IPLs of the
taper pipe being lower than those of the straight tube and that the SEA increases with increasing taper. Both
the IPL and the SEA in oblique impact decrease as the collision angle increases for fourfold-cell conical tube
with taper of 0.3. Therefore, a reasonable adjustment of the tube taper and cell number can improve the energy
absorption characteristics of thin-walled tubes.

Key words: automotive collision, automotive structural parts, conical tube, unit cell, initial peak load (IPL),
specific energy absorption (SEA)

CLC Number: