A FEM Frontal Impact Study of Square-Section Tubes with Different Structural Solutions for Vehicle Safety

The present paper presents a study of square-section tubes conditioned to a FE dynamic frontal impact analysis, considering a 10.0 m/s initial velocity against an infinitely rigid plane. A 50.0 kg punctual mass is positioned on center of the cross-sections, on the farthest side from the rigid plane and the deceleration pulse is measured along the simulations. After validating the numerical model with analytical solutions, the results are compared for four geometries with little structural differences in order to access the role of each difference on the geometry under crash situations. The results show that adding many triggers to the geometry may not be the best performance solution for crash boxes, since the geometry with few triggers achieved better values of deceleration peak than the others. In addition, the presence of holes showed to be an instability cause to the system. The structural solutions presented could be of great value for future vehicle crash box developments.