Crashworthiness Optimization Design of Aluminum Alloy Thin-Walled Triangle Column Based on Bioinspired Strategy
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State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
2
Key Laboratory of Advanced Manufacturing Technology of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
3
Hangzhou Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou 310052, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Materials 2020, 13(3), 666; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13030666
Received: 8 January 2020
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Revised: 26 January 2020
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Accepted: 1 February 2020
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Published: 2 February 2020
(This article belongs to the Section Advanced Materials Characterization)
Aluminum alloy thin-walled structures have been well used in applications of energy absorption. In the present work, a bioinspired design strategy for aluminum alloy thin-walled structures is proposed to improve the performance of out-of-plane crashworthiness by altering the material distribution. According to the proposed strategy, a novel fractal thin-walled triangle column (FTTC) is designed, which is composed by iteratively applying the affine transformation of a base triangle up to 2nd-order. The finite element model is established to investigate the out-of-plane crashworthiness of FTTC and validated by experiment results. The numerical analysis of the crashworthiness of FTTC with different fractal orders (0th, 1st and 2nd) are performed, and the results show that 1st- and 2nd-order FTTC enhance the energy absorption of structures and crush force efficiency. In particular, 2nd-order FTTC has better energy absorption ability due to the optimal distribution of materials, which are efficiently organized by the proposed bioinspired design strategy. In addition, a parameter study is performed to investigate the effect of FTTC geometric details on the crushing procedure. The collapse mode shows that it tends to change from unstable to stable with the increase in thickness and side length and the decrease in height. Moreover, a positive relevant relationship is identified between the thickness and the crashworthiness for FTTC.
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Keywords:
crashworthiness; fractal design; thin-walled column; energy absorption
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MDPI and ACS Style
Li, K.; Feng, Y.; Gao, Y.; Zheng, H.; Qiu, H. Crashworthiness Optimization Design of Aluminum Alloy Thin-Walled Triangle Column Based on Bioinspired Strategy. Materials 2020, 13, 666. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13030666
AMA Style
Li K, Feng Y, Gao Y, Zheng H, Qiu H. Crashworthiness Optimization Design of Aluminum Alloy Thin-Walled Triangle Column Based on Bioinspired Strategy. Materials. 2020; 13(3):666. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13030666
Chicago/Turabian StyleLi, Kangjie, Yixiong Feng, Yicong Gao, Hao Zheng, and Hao Qiu. 2020. "Crashworthiness Optimization Design of Aluminum Alloy Thin-Walled Triangle Column Based on Bioinspired Strategy" Materials 13, no. 3: 666. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13030666
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