Research on the Crashworthiness of Two-Layer Thin-Walled Structures

In order to design the appropriate crashworthy structure of a locomotive vehicle, the two-layer thin-walled structures were taken as research objects. The efficient non-linear explicit dynamic finite element analysis software, ANSYS/LS-DYNA, was adopted to research the energy absorption characteristics of the one-layer thin-walled structure and the two-layer, thin-walled structure. The results have shown that the evaluation parameters (the energy-absorbing efficiency, the buffer index) of energy absorption characteristics of two-layer, thin-walled structures are better than those of one-layer structures. An idea of using two-layer thin-walled structure as an energy-absorbing element of a crashworthy vehicle is put forward. The results of simulation on two-layer, thin-walled structures with different shapes have also shown that the dimensions of the inner-layer have effect on energy absorption characteristics.