Impact and Energy Absorption of TWB Thin-Walled Structures with Polygonal Cross-Sections

Nowadays, thin-walled structures and different materials destined to absorb kinetic energy initiated a great interest among the researchers from the auto, naval, military industries even from the protection equipment production industry. The main role of these structures is to absorb and dissipate the kinetic energy so the maximum level of deceleration to be limited. Thus, the structures collapse through progressive buckling. The aim is to control this progressive buckling as efficient as possible through the collapse mode or the construction technique. This collapsing mode is well described and characterised by the international literature [.The plastic strain history of the components constituting the thin-walled structure is very important because each bending, stretching process or tensioning brings with it self-a series of transformations which compete to influence the dynamic response of this kind of structures [2].In this study, all the above presented aspects were taken into consideration in the analysis of the impact and energy absorption behaviour regarding thin-walled structures by using explicit nonlinear finite element code LS_Dyna V971. The thin-walled structures involved in this research are made from tailor welded blanks (TWB) and were subject of axial impact crashing tests. There were used three types of cross-section shapes: rectangular, pentagonal and hexagonal. In order to have a fare comparison study, all the studied structures had a 250mm cross-section perimeter and a height of 250mm, also. Each structure is constituted from four, five or six sheet metal parts bonded together.