Crushing of axially compressed steel tubes filled with aluminium foam

Quasi-static axial crushing of extruded polystyrene foam-filled thin-walled aluminum tubes: Experimental and numerical analysis

“…9(a) and (b) show the agreements between the experimental and model deformed shapes of tubes at 15% and 50% deformations. The effect of foam filling is to reduce the fold length and hence to increase the number of folds formed (10-11), a result which was also previously found in foamfilled Al and steel tubes [8][9][10]13]. The load values of model further show good coincidence with those of experiment as depicted in Fig.…”

“…It should, however, be stated here that the comparison of the energy absorptions between empty and filled tubes should be made on the equal mass basis by taking into consideration the thickening of the empty tube wall. Previous studies on Al foam-filled tubes and boxes have shown that there existed a critical total filled tube mass and the corresponding critical foam density above which the use of foam filling became more efficient than empty tube [9,13,[19][20][21]. The effect of polystyrene foam filler density and the critical total mass of filled tubes should be further investigated numerically and experimentally for efficient crash element designs.…”

Predicting energy absorption in a foam-filled thin-walled aluminum tube based on experimentally determined strengthening coefficient

“…It has been shown that when aluminum and steel metal tubes are filled with light weight core materials such as Al closed cell foams, there exists an interaction effect between tube wall and foam filler [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The crushing loads of foam filled tubes are therefore found to be higher than the sum of the crushing loads of foam (alone) and tube (alone) mainly due to this effect.…”

“…Studies on the crushing behavior of foam filled tubes were particularly aimed at determining the effect of foam filling on the average crushing load and the specific energy absorption [1,2,5,[8][9][10]. In designing with foam filled tubes, knowledge of upper and lower limits of the strengthening may be however required for the accurate prediction of the specific energy absorption of any tube-filler combination.…”

Finite element and coupled finite element/smooth particle hydrodynamics modeling of the quasi-static crushing of empty and foam-filled single, bitubular and constraint hexagonal- and square-packed aluminum tubes

“…It was concluded in the same study that the thin-walled foam-filled members could be used as efficient crash energy absorbers. Seitzberger et al [7,8] investigated the axial crushing of foam-filled square, hexagonal, octagonal and bitubular steel tubes. It was reported that considerable improvements with respect to energy absorption were obtained with foam filling particularly in bitubular configurations.…”