Effects of Geometry, Triggering and Foam-Filling on Crashworthiness Behaviour of a Cylindrical Composite Crash Box

Crash boxes play an important role in different industries as energy absorbers to reduce damage of accidents. An ideal crash box has lower maximum force and higher energy absorption. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of various parameters such as geometry (diameter and thickness), triggering and filling with polymeric foam on axial crash behaviour of a composite cylindrical cash box. To this end, a composite crash box is modelled in a commercial finite element software, Abaqus, utilising the Hashin failure criterion to predict damage initiation. Linking damage initiation with material degradation rules provides the capability for damage evolution prediction on the basis of fracture energy of different failure modes. A new parameter (β) is defined to study the performance of a crash box with different geometries, triggers and foam-filling. The results show that three different triggering geometries (chamfer, fillet, and tulip) decrease the maximum load about 7-33%, and improved energy absorption about 40-86% compared to the crash box without trigger. Filling a triggered crash box with polymeric foam also improves energy absorption about 20%. Applying both triggering and foam-filling simultaneously on a crash box has a complementary role to receive a better performance.