Compression behavior and design optimization of triggered glass fiber reinforced polymer square tubes

Abstract

Glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite tubes have become increasingly popular in crashworthiness applications. On the other hand, square section GFRP tubes are prone to damage in a catastrophic failure mode in the early stages of the crushing process. At this point, triggering mechanisms have great potential to ensure deformation in progressive mode and improve the compression performance of GFRP tubes. Motivated by these facts, this paper aims to optimize the compression performance of square GFRP tubes by implementing notch‐type triggering mechanisms. The effects of notch width, number and length on the axial compression response of tubes were investigated to determine the optimal trigger configurations that would maximize specific energy absorption (SEA) and minimize peak crushing force (PCF). Experiments were conducted based on Taguchi L9 orthogonal array design, and Taguchi coupled Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS) method was employed for optimizing multiple responses. The optimization results revealed that the proposed trigger mechanisms induced progressive crushing by preventing catastrophic failure, thereby significantly improving the compression performance of GFRP tubes. In particular, the results showed that the PCF of intact GFRP tube decreased by up to 38%, while SEA increased by up to 130% with the help of proposed trigger mechanism.Highlights The compression performance of square GFRP tubes improved by notch‐type triggering. The notch width, length and number were chosen as design parameters. Taguchi experimental design was used to find the best configuration of design parameters. The optimum configurations were examined through the entropy‐WASPAS approach. The results revealed that significant improvements can be achieved using trigger mechanism.