A numerical analysis of the effect of variation of groove on thin-walled tube under quasi-static load

Abstract Crashworthiness characteristics of structures which may undergo impact loading is one of the most critical parameters and are important to evaluate in order to ensure minimum structural damage. The present work is focused on to analyze crash-worthiness characteristics of thin-walled tubes numerically through ABAQUS 6.5. The tubes were incorporated with different number of semi-circular grooves on their outer walls. In the computational analysis, the number of grooves is varied as 4, 6 and 8 and its effects on the crashworthiness parameters have been evaluated. Load-displacement curves for different cases have been plotted and parameters such as peak load and energy absorption are calculated and compared with that of a simple thin wall tube. A detailed analysis of the fold formation mechanism for all the tubes has been carried out. It is clearly seen that the crashworthiness characteristics of grooved tubes are much better than that of the simple tube.