Influence of Material on Automotive Crash-box Crashworthiness Subjected to Low Velocity Impact

Crash-box equipped at the front end of a car, is one of the most important automotive parts for crash energy absorption. In case of frontal crash accident, it is expected to be collapsed with absorbing crash energy prior to other body parts so that the damage of the main cabin frame is minimized and passengers may be saved. Crash-box usually was made a mental thin walled tube. In the paper, automobile crash-box at low-velocity impact was studied by using Finite Element Method. The FE model of the tube was validated by comparing the experimental results and FE model results. Results show that on average the difference of these was within 10%. The good correlation of results obtained show that the numerical analyses are reliable. Crash-box of carbon steel and aluminum alloy materials are compared, it indicates that the peak impact force and maximum energy absorption have certain effect to energy-absorbing component with different materials.