Abstract
Abstract
The global automotive industry is developing to be one of the largest and most complex undertakings in industrial history. Recently, such escalating concerns as climate protection and energy security drove automakers to concentrate attentions not only on safety but also on how to reduce the weight of car, which will contribute to the fuel economy. Modern fiber reinforced plastics (FRPs), owing to their inherent high strength-weight and stiffness-weight ratios, are gradually adopted as structural applications in automotive field.
A FRP tube, named as crush can, as one kind of energy absorption elements, is designed to place behind the bumper, illustrating in the Fig.1. In the case of full-lap and offset frontal accidents, the tube can absorb the impact energy through stable, high energy crushing mode, known as progressive crushing Fig 2(a) and then protect the passengers during collisions. It is found that FRP tubes generally require a collapse trigger mechanism to generate progressive crushing rather than a sudden catastrophic type of failure Fig 2(b) (1-4). Therefore, collapse trigger mechanism is also an importance factor in the design of energy absorption FRPs.