NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FLEXURAL CRASHWORTHINESS OF THIN-WALLED SQUARE TUBES WITH CORNER REINFORCEMENT
Q.-Yu Xie1,2, Q. Li2, S.-Q. Xue2, Y.-T. Shi2, L.-M. Guo2
1Tongling University, Tongling, China
2Changzhou Institute of Technology, Changzhou, China
Keywords: flexural crashworthiness, thin-walled tube, corner reinforcement, finite element analysis
Abstract
A method for enhancing the corner strength of thin-walled square tubes by incorporating four corner reinforcements consisting of stiffeners with or without lightweight polyurethane foam fillers is proposed and validated. Three-point bending tests of thin-walled square tubes with corner reinforcement are simulated using the ABAQUS/Explicit software package. The numerical results show that corner reinforcement significantly changes the cross-sectional deformation mode of the tubes. The specific energy absorption of tubes with corner reinforcements is substantially higher than that of unreinforced tubes. Based on an analysis of the cross-sectional deformation, it is proposed to remove the two lower corner reinforcements to further increase the specific energy absorption. The specific energy absorption of a tube reinforced with only the two upper corner reinforcements is 2.24 times higher than that of a conventional hollow square tube and also exceeds that of the proposed configurations with four reinforcements.
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