Author(s)

D Karagiozova & N Jones

Abstract

The influence of axial and transverse, or lateral, inertia effects on the crushing behaviour of square aluminium tubes, when struck axially by a mass, is examined using a numerical simulation. It is observed that axial and lateral inertia have a significant effect on the development of the buckling shape and energy absorption performance of a tube. The initial fold can develop at any position along a shell length depending on the impact velocity and the striking mass. The axial compression of a shell can reduce significantly the shell length available for buckling, however, this compression is only affected slightly by the impact velocity when the impacts are applied with a constant energy. By way of contrast, the crushing distance exhibits strong inertia sensitivity, This parameter decreases significantly when impacts having equal energies are applied with increasing initial velocities. The numerically, predicted crushing characteristics of a shell agree well with experimental data on square aluminium tubes for impact velocities between 15 m/s and 98 m/s

Keywords