VELOCITY AND MASS SENSITIVITY OF CIRCULAR AND SQUARE TUBES UNDER AXIAL IMPACT

摘要

The influence of impact velocity, striking mass and material yield stress on some crashworthiness characteristics of aluminium alloy circular and square tubes is analysed when adopting the 'Type II structures' concept. It is revealed that the initial compressive phase in dynamically loaded tubes plays a significant role in the selection of the collapse mode of relatively long tubes. It is shown numerically that the mean load of a tube made of strain rate sensitive materials does not necessarily increase when increasing the impact velocity due to the significant proportion of the initial kinetic energy that can be absorbed before any folding has commenced.