An Axial Crushing Characteristics of Hybrid Kenaf/Glass Fabric Wrapped Aluminium Capped Tubes Under Static Loading

Thin-walled tubular members are frequently used as energy absorbing elements in modern vehicles which can protect occupants during impact collisions. These tubular energy absorbing devices are once plastically deformed, they are discarded and exchanged. Thus, the design constraint for such element is generally to attain excellent specific energy absorption with light weight, while keeping the crushing force low enough to reduce the injury to the occupants and damage to the vehicle. Metal tubes with wrapped fabric, polymer composites are one such device with outstanding specific energy absorption capacity and mean crushing force compared with the metal tubes and hence proposed. Therefore, this research article investigates the axial crushing and specific energy absorption characteristics of hybrid kenaf/glass fabric wrapped aluminium capped tubes through static experiments. The proposed tubes comprise of a cylindrical segment with plain end cap, shallow-spherical cap and hemispherical cap, which were manufactured by a multi-stage deep drawing process. Hybrid aluminium-composite tubes were prepared by wrapping fabrics over the aluminium tubes by hand-lay-up method. The static crushing behaviour and energy absorption characteristics of various tube configurations were examined experimentally. Moreover, the crashworthiness performance of the proposed hybrid tube was compared with plain aluminium tubes and the results revealed that the specific energy absorption capacity of the hybrid tube is 15-35% greater than the plain aluminium tube. As a result, the present research article emphasized the advantages of using hybrid tubes so as to improve the crashworthiness characteristics of energy absorbing elements in automotive vehicles.