Dynamic axial compression of square CFRP/aluminium tubes

Abstract

Carbon fibre composite tubes have high strength to weight ratios and outstanding performance under axial crushing. In this paper, square CFRP tubes and aluminium sheet-wrapped CFRP tubes were impacted by a drop mass to investigate the effect of loading velocity on the energy absorption of CFRP/aluminium tubes. A comparison of the quasi-static and dynamic crushing behaviours of tubes was made in terms of deformation mode, peak crushing force, mean crushing force, energy absorption and specific energy absorption. The influence of the number of aluminium layers that wrapped square CFRP tubes on the crushing performance of tubes under axial impact was also examined. Experimental results manifested similar deformation modes of tubes in both quasi-static and dynamic tests. The dynamic peak crushing force was higher than the quasi-static counterpart, while mean crushing force, energy absorption and specific energy absorption were lower in dynamic tests than those in quasi-static tests. The mean crushing force and energy absorption decreased with the crushing velocity and increased with the number of aluminium layers. The impact stroke (when the force starts to drop) decreased with the number of aluminium layers.