Energy-absorption characteristics of sandwich corrugated square tubes under axial crushing

Sandwich thin-walled tubes can significantly improve the overall energy absorption due to the coupling effect. In this paper, a novel sandwich corrugated square tube (SCST), where corrugated square tubes were placed between inner square tube and outer square tube, was proposed. The crashworthiness analysis and coupling effect of the SCSTs were studied using Abaqus/Explicit. Results show that the energy absorption of SCSTs increases with the increase in amplitude and number of corrugations. The highest increase in EA, SEA, CFE reached 77.74%, 77.68%, 113.99%, respectively, while the largest decrease in Fmax reached by 20.17% compared to the linear sum of the three standalone structures in the SCSTs. Finally, parameterization study of SCSTs was system carried out.