A study of crashworthiness performance in thin-walledmulti-cell tubes 3D-printed from different polymers

Abstract

Multicellular, thin-walled impact tubes have been intensely studied and usedin various engineering fields in recent years due to their lightweight, high per-formance, ease of application, superior energy absorption, and stable deforma-tion characteristics. In this study, energy absorption, crashworthinessperformances, and deformation properties of thin-walled structures manufac-tured from polylactic acid (PLA+) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)using fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology were compared underquasi-static axial compression. Thin-walled structures consist of multicellulartubes connected by concentric corner-edge connections with square and hex-agonal cross-sections. Experimental testing outcomes indicate that the energyabsorption capacity increases with increasing the number of corners in multi-cellular structures. The tubes with square wall-to-wall (S-WW) and hexagonalwall-to-wall (H-WW) cross-sections exhibit superior crashworthiness perfor-mance compared to other cross-sections. Based on the experimental results,the absorbed energy by WW patterned PLA+ square tubes are 19%, 7%, and46% more than that of wall-to-corner (WC), corner-to-wall (CW), and corner-to-corner (CC) patterned tubes, respectively, while it is 11%, 19%, and 80%more in hexagonal cross-section tubes, respectively. This study provides aninformative reference for easier applicability of multicellular energy-absorbingstructures with 3D-print and the design of corner-edge connections of internalconnections in multicellular structures.