Study on the crashworthiness of bio-inspired multi-cell tube under axial impact

In recent years, thin-walled energy-absorbing structures have attracted more and more attention due to their excellent structural mechanical properties. In this article, one new kind of multi-cell bionic intersecting thin-walled tube inspired by the structure of the pine cone was designed. In order to fully study the crashworthiness of this new multi-cell tube under axial impact, the effectiveness of the simulation analysis is verified by the verification test of the circular thin-walled tube. Then, the crashworthiness of the circular tube and a series of multi-cell tubes were compared by means of simulation analysis. The simulation results show that the new multi-cell tube can effectively improve the efficiency of energy absorption, specific energy absorption, and crushing force efficiency under the premise of sacrificing part of the peak load. Finally, the response surface method was used to find the optimal design parameters. Response surface model (RSM) was used to represent specific energy absorption (SEA), peak force (PF), crushing force efficiency (CFE), and mass (M). Optimisation results show that the overall impact performance of the three-cell bionic tube under the axial impact load is better than that of the ordinary circular tube and several other multi-cell tubes. Therefore, the three-cell bionic tube can be used as an excellent absorption structure of collision energy under axial impact.