Abstract
In order to increase vehicle fuel efficiency while improving safety and performance and maintaining affordability, the global steel industry has initiated the use of advanced high strength steels that ultimately result in the design of stronger, lighter and more energy efficient vehicles. Tubular steel columns are extensively used in the automotive body structure due to their inherent capacity to absorb energy on impact. Hence, the objective of this research work is to study the crashworthiness performance of spot-welded columns made from advanced high strength steels. It is shown that numerical results of the developed robust finite element model give fairly good agreement with experimental data in terms of collapse profile, deformed column shape, final crush length, and impact peak force. Throughout the investigation, the finite element model permits the study of several structural and material variables that can be validated by a moderate set of destructive tests. Moreover, the current finite element crash model and the findings in this work can eventually be used to improve the crashworthiness efficiency of steel column specimens and to help meet society´s demands for affordable, fuel efficient, environmentally responsible, and safe vehicles.
Keywords:Energy absorption, spot-weld failure, crashworthiness, thin-walled section, high-strength steel.