Abstract

Crush response of Variable Thickness Distribution (VTD) tubes subjected to oblique loading are investigated for external inversion process. Crashworthiness performance and benefits of VTD tubes compared with their Uniform Thickness (UT) equivalents. Furthermore, in order to find detail verification about crush process of VTD tubes, at first Finite element (FE) models established and then validated by experimental tests to ensure that they can accurately predict the responses of VTD inversion tubes. Our study shows that tube thickness distribution, die radius, and coefficient of friction between die and tube have great influence on the responses of VTD tubes inversion. The results demonstrated that different loading angles have different requirements on geometries of VTD inversion tubes. The outcome of this paper gives new design ideas to improve crashworthiness performance of inversion tubes under oblique loads.