Experimental & numerical study on hybrid aluminium/GFRP thin-walled column under quasi-static axial loading

This paper discusses a research study to examine the behaviour of a circular thin-walled column subjected to quasi-static axial loading. Pure aluminium and hybrid aluminium/GFRP thin-walled column were experimentally tested, then a numerical simulation model using LS-Dyna approached the results. A parametric study was investigated with several material model parameters for a deeper understanding of the woven prepreg GFRP composite modelling. It was found that the failure mode and crashworthiness parameters result would be affected by parameter variations. Therefore, the values used for these parameters were obtained by doing parameter calibration so that the load-displacement response of the thin-walled column is similar to experimental results. The further parametric study result showed that the composite layers wrapped around the outer wall could increase the capacity of the energy absorption thin-walled column. Adding thickness to the composite layers would increase crashworthiness parameters, including mean crushing force, energy absorption, and specific energy absorption under quasi-static loading. Furthermore, the proposed modelling strategy developed in this work can be used as a reference for modelling the thin-walled column made of hybrid material due to the limited comprehensive numerical parametric studies on hybrid thin-walled column.