Numerical analysis on axial crushing damage of aluminum/CFRP hybrid thin-walled tubes

Metal/CFRP hybrid structures have been increasingly applied in the automotive industry due to their favorable weight-saving and crashworthiness. In this article, a nonlinear finite element (FE) model is established to study the axial crushing behavior of aluminum/CFRP thin-walled tube structures. A progressive damage constitutive model is employed to capture the intra-laminar response of composites; Johnson-Cook model is used to describe the crushing process of aluminum layers and a bilinear cohesive zone model is applied for modeling the inter-layer delamination during the collapse process. A user material subroutine VUMAT involving these damage models is coded and executed to attain the numerical solution based on ABAQUS/Explicit solver. The axial crushing processes of thin-walled tubes with different configurations are simulated, and the corresponding damage characteristics are analyzed thoroughly. The influence of aluminum layer arrangement and cross-sectional shape on the crashworthiness and energy absorption of thin-walled tubes is discussed, which provides a design basis for the application of energy absorption elements.