An investigation on the energy absorption characteristics of a multi-cell hexagonal tube under axial crushing loads

A multi-cell tube enhances the energy absorption considerably compared to the absorption of a single tube under the same conditions. A novel tube configuration, namely, a multi-cell hexagonal tube, was proposed in this paper. The multi-cell tubes consist of three basic elements: a 2-panel element and two 3-panel elements (I and II). Simplified super folding element theory was utilized to estimate the energy dissipation of the basic elements. Based on this estimation, a theoretical expression for the mean crushing force was developed for the proposed tubes. The relative errors between a simulation, an experiment and theoretical results were no more than 5%. The effects of the hexagonal tube size and wall thickness on the crashworthiness of the multi-cell tubes were investigated. To a certain extent, the energy absorption and peak crushing force increased as the tube size and thickness increased. The response surface method (RSM) and the multi-objective non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) were used to improve the crashworthiness of the tube, and Pareto fronts were achieved. Finally, it was concluded that the optimal solution is C = 45 mm, t1 = 3.0 mm, and t2 = 2.35 mm, and the corresponding SEA and PCF were 16.52 kJ/kg and 411.36 kN, respectively.