A study on crushing behaviour and energy absorption capacity of a thin-walled rectangular tube under axial compression

Abstract

The crushing behaviour of a thin-walled rectangular tube under axial compression is investigated. The crushing process with regular folding is considered. The characteristic values of the crush load of a rectangular tube with an arbitrary section aspect ratio are empirically obtained. In the experiments, two different peak-values per period in the crush load-distance curve are observed. The folding model, recently proposed by the authors, is primarily based on accounting the ratio of outward length to half-wave fold length in the crushing process. The crush distance after the first perfect fold is formed and the general crush distance per fold are theoretically derived using the geometrical configuration of a crush fold. The crush load-distance curve is assumed to be the sum of a fourth power term and two cosine functions. The energy absorption capacity is obtained with the integration of this curve over the crush distance. The number of crush folds is then easily calculated. © 1996 Taylor and Francis Group LLC.