Evaluation of crash energy absorption capacity of a tearing tube

Abstract

This paper deals with the numerical prediction of energy absorption capacity of a tearing tube, which can absorb the crash energy through expanding and axial splitting processes. It is important to consider the dynamic material behavior and fracture characteristics of tube material in order to simulate the deformation behavior of a tearing tube accurately. Uniaxial tensile tests are performed in order to obtain the flow stress curve and the fracture strain of a tube material according to the strain rate. Quasi-static tensile tests were carried out in the range of strain rates from 0.001/sec to 0.01/sec using a static tensile testing machine. Dynamic tensile tests were conducted at strain rates ranged from 0.1/sec to 300/sec using a high speed material testing machine. These dynamic material properties are utilized to finite element analysis through a user material subroutine of ABAQUS/Explicit. Especially, ductile fracture criteria are adopted in order to describe the fracture characteristics of a tube material during axial splitting process. Dynamic tearing cases are simulated and the reliability of numerical results is verified by comparing them with the experimental results in dynamic tearing tests. The simulated results accurately predict the onset of fracture in axial splitting process and the energy absorption capacity has a good agreement with experimental results.