To address the issues of excessive initial peak crushing force and insufficient energy absorption efficiency of automotive crash boxes under impact loading
a novel hierarchical honeycomb-filled tube with corrugated configurations was proposed to enhance its axial crashworthiness through structural optimization.
Methods
2
Firstly
finite element models of hierarchical honeycomb-filled tubes were established to analyze the influence of three corrugation patterns (circular
triangular
and rectangular) on crashworthiness. Secondly
the force-displacement responses and energy absorption characteristics of conventional honeycomb-filled tubes and corrugated hierarchical honeycomb-filled tubes were compared to validate the peak force reduction effect of corrugation design. Then
the effects of key geometric parameters
including outer wall thickness
0-order and 1-order cell wall thicknesses
on specific energy absorption (SEA)
initial peak crushing force (IPCF)
and crushing force efficiency (CFE) were systematically investigated. Finally
multi-objective optimization was performed using the Kriging model and NSGA-Ⅲ algorithm
with corrugation shapes and wall thicknesses as design variables
to achieve an optimal configuration balancing high energy absorption and low peak force.
Results
2
The results show that the triangular corrugated hierarchical honeycomb-filled tube reduces the IPCF by approximately 36.2%
increases the SEA by 11.3%
and improves the CFE to 0.89 compared to the conventional tube. The outer wall thickness plays a dominant role in determining the IPCF
while the 1-order cell wall thickness contributes significantly to energy absorption
and the effect of the 0-order cell wall thickness is relatively minor. Under constant mass
the optimized structure achieves an interaction energy absorption ratio of up to 16.67%
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