Papers by Keyword: Tube Thickness

Abstract: Occupant safety is one of the critical performance criteria established in the aerospace industry. Several composite materials have been developed but the energy absorption properties are not yet satisfactory. This study investigates the energy absorption characteristics of aluminum tubes reinforced with coir-fiber/epoxy system at varying proportions (10-90%) according to the specifications of hybrid tube thickness compositions (10T, 15T, 20T) towards evolving a criterion for optimal performance. Finite element analysis was conducted in ABAQUS to determine the load–displacement response and the crashworthiness properties of the tubes while a representative volume element (RVE) model was formulated to obtain the elastic properties of the reinforcement phase. The results indicated that the incidence of high peak forces P_max is related to tube thickness variations where the 20T tubes were found to give the best performance, while the 15T tubes showed a superior performance under progressive crushing and presented the best responses for specific energy absorption (SEA). A multi-objective optimization plan was implemented and through the Pareto fronts, tube configurations (C20T60F), (C15T70F) and (C20T40F) were found to be most consistent with the design criteria. Results from experimental validation were found to be in close agreement with numerical predictions and satisfied the overall objective of achieving a good balance in lightweight design for crashworthiness applications.

Abstract: There are two reasons to enlarge the thickness of welding HDPE tri-branch tube. Firstly, welding weakens the HDPE material properties. Secondly, stress concentration occurs at the joint of tri-branch tube. The material properties of HDPE and the tensile strength of welding HDPE were tested. Based on the test results, the wall-thickness of HDPE tri-branch tube was investigated by numerical optimization design with particle swarm optimization (PSO). Two material constitutive models of elasto-palstic and Ramberg-Osgood for HDPE are adopted in FEM. Some valuable conclusions of pipeline design are concluded by the distribution of stress contour curves and optimization curves of welding joint of HDPE tri-branch tube.