Crashworthiness Analysis of Bi-Tubular Aluminium Tubes with Varying Shapes in LS-Dyna

The viability of thin-walled energy absorbers as impacts attenuators for Formula SAE racing cars was studied. The crashworthiness of bi-tubular tubes of varying geometries were explored. 9 designs grouped into 3 batches, were axially crush simulated in LS-Dyna. The tubes were set to 50mm long and made of aluminium 6061-T6. A convergence study was conducted, and the tubes were simulated using a meshing size of 1.5mm. The crushing energy applied is 490J. The LS-Dyna settings used were validated using experimental data from previous studies. It was found that the tube with an outer hexagon shape and an inner square shape had the best SEA. It was also observed that square-shaped geometries were the best in absorbing energy, with the most amount of energy being absorbed by a bi-tubular tube with outer and inner square geometries. Tubes with hexagonal geometries absorbed slightly less energy compared to tubes with square geometries, but they only differ by a small margin.