Experimental and numerical investigation of grooves shape on the energy absorption of 6061 T6 aluminium tubes under axial compression
In this paper, an experimental study is presented to investigate the crushing behaviour and energy absorption of 6061 T6 aluminium alloy grooved tubes with different grooves shapes. In order to study the effects of geometry and number of grooves on the behaviour of the thin walled cylindrical tubes, a series of quasi static axial compression tests are performed. Also, several numerical simulations using ABAQUS finite element explicit code are performed to study the energy absorption characteristics of these structures. Meanwhile, this study focused on selecting the best geometry of grooves on the tube with comparison between crashworthiness characteristics and collapse mode. The grooves are formed as isosceles triangle, circular, trapezoid and rectangle, whose are introduced inside and outside the tube. In general, geometrical parameters of grooves and dimension of the tube are not changed along the tube. It was found that numbers and geometry of grooves are important to improve the uniformity of the load displacement behaviour of axially crushed tubes, decrease the maximum crushing load, predict and control the collapse mode. Also, the analytical results for mean crushing load and energy absorption, using the equations presented in other paper are calculated and compared with the experimental and numerical results.