Metallic thin-walled round tubes are widely used as energy absorptionelements. However, lateral splash of the round tubes under impact loadingsreduces the energy absorption efficiency and may cause secondary damages.Therefore, it is necessary to assemble and fasten round tubes together byboundary constraints and/or fasteners between tubes, which increases the timeand labor cost and affects the mechanical performance of round tubes. In aneffort to break through this limitation, a novel self-locked energy-absorbingsystem has been proposed in this paper. The proposed system is made up ofthin-walled tubes with dumbbell-shaped cross section, which are speciallydesigned to interlock with each other and thus provide lateral constraint underimpact loadings. Both finite element simulations and impact experimentdemonstrated that without boundary constraints or fasteners between tubes, theproposed self-locked energy-absorbing system can still effectively attenuateimpact loads while the round tube systems fail to carry load due to the lateralsplashing of tubes. Furthermore, the optimal geometric design for a singledumbbell-shaped tube and the optimal stacking arrangement for the system arediscussed, and a general guideline on the structural design of the proposedself-locked energy absorbing system is provided.
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