Crashworthiness analysis of a cylindrical auxetic structure under axial impact loading

Structures with negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR) have been widely used in engineering application due to its unusual properties. In this paper, crashworthiness of a novel cylindrical auxetic structure under axial impact loading is investigated by the numerical methods. The software LS-DYNA is adopted to analyze the effects of the geometry parameters on the force, energy absorption (EA) and specific energy absorption (SEA). It is found that an overlarge number of layers and cells will make NPR structure extend outward from the mid; NPR structures with small number of layers and cells will make some layers of structures rotate in final crushing state. If the thickness of the long-inclined bean (L-beam) is larger than that of short-inclined beam (S-beam), there will be a smoother transition from the lower to a higher value in crushing force. Conversely, the force will maintain a relatively steady value, which determined by the sum of the thickness of L- and S-beams. In addition, there is also a critical inner circle radius which distinguishes different deformation modes. Once the critical inner circle radius is smaller than the critical value, NPR structures tend to deform unsteadily.