ARTICLE IN PRESS

Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797

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Thin-Walled Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tws

Axial crushing of circular tubes with buckling initiators

X.W. Zhang, Q.D. Tian, T.X. Yu 
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, PR China

a r t i c l e in f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents a study of the effectiveness of adding a buckling initiator which is used to reduce
Received 2 October 2008 the initial peak force of a thin-walled circular tube under axial impact loadings. The buckling initiator is
Received in revised form installed near the impact end of the circular tube and is composed of a pre-hit column along the axis of
20 January 2009
the tube and several pulling strips uniformly distributed around the top edge of the tube. This device
Accepted 20 January 2009
Available online 4 March 2009
functions just before the impact happens and does not affect the structural stiffness under its normal
working conditions. By using two kinds of aluminum-alloy circular tubes, a series of quasi-static
Keywords: compression tests were conducted. The deformation mode, the initial peak force and the mean crushing
Circular tube force of the tubes with different number of pulling strips N, pre-hit height h and inclined angle of the
Axial crushing
pulling strips y0 were studied in the experiments. The results reveal that by using this buckling initiator,
Peak force
the large progressive deformation of the axially crushed circular tube switches from ring mode or mixed
Energy absorption
Buckling initiator mode to diamond mode. Although specimens with N ¼ 2, 3 and 4 were tested, the stable deformation
tended to diamond mode with lobe number N ¼ 3. With suitable selection of pre-hit height h, the initial
peak force could be reduced by more than 30%. In addition, a simplified theoretical analysis is conducted
to illustrate the reduction of the initial force as well as the energy dissipation mechanisms, leading to
good agreements with the experimental results.
& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Thin-walled circular tubes are widely employed in engineering
as structural elements, because of their low cost, high strength
and stiffness, excellent loading–carrying efficiency and energy
absorption capacity. In particular, when subjected to axial impact
loadings, the thin-walled circular tubes could deform in a
progressive crushing mode and serve as excellent energy
absorbers with a long stroke, stable loading and high specific
energy absorption capacity. With the rapidly increasing require-
ments of safety and energy-saving in automobile, high-speed
railway and aerospace industries, the axial crushed thin-walled
tubes are thought to be very promising in the future applications.
The earliest study on the axial crushing of thin-walled circular
tubes started around 1960s, when Alexander [1] and Pugsley
and Macaulay [2] developed theoretical models to predict the
energy absorption of axially crushed circular tubes deformed in
the axisymmetric mode (concertina or ring mode) and non-
axisymmetric mode (diamond mode), respectively. The energy
absorption of non-axisymmetric mode was further studied by
Pugsley [3] and Johnson and Soden [4]. Andrews et al. [5]
classified the deformation modes of the axial collapse of
 Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 2358 8957.
E-mail address: metxyu@ust.hk (T.X. Yu).
cylindrical tubes and found that the deformation mode greatly
depends on the length/diameter and diameter/thickness ratios.
Later on, Jones and Abramowicz [6,7] conducted numerous
experiments and improved the previous theoretical models on
the ring mode by introducing the effective stroke and dynamic
effects. In addition, many other researchers made their efforts to
further improve the theoretical models for the axial crushing of
circular tubes, such as Wierzbicki and Bhat [8], Grzebieta [9],
Gupta et al. [10] and Huang and Lu [11], etc. In the last decade, the
dynamic buckling under high-velocity impact as well as the
transition between the global buckling and the progressive
buckling modes were investigated by Abramowicz and Jones
[12], and Jensen et al. [13].
Although, the axially loaded circular tubes have so many
advantages as energy absorbers, they have a big shortcoming that
when subjected to axial impact, they sustain an extremely high
initial peak force. According to the injury criteria (e.g. HIC), this
high peak force may cause serious damage or injury to the
occupants or cargo. Therefore, in order to reduce the initial peak
force, many methods have been proposed, such as introducing
grooves or dents [14], using corrugated tubes [15] or patterns [16],
and so on. It is true that these methods could reduce the peak force;
but they also reduce the stiffness of the structure under the normal
working conditions [17]. Therefore, a device, which does not affect
the performance of the structure in normal use, whilst it could
improve its energy absorption characteristics, is highly desired.

0263-8231/$ - see front matter & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tws.2009.01.002
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X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797
In a previous study [18], the authors have studied the energy
absorption of aluminum-alloy square tubes with buckling in-
itiators subjected to axial impact loadings, and found that the
buckling initiator could reduce the initial peak force as much
as 30% without changing the other excellent characteristics of
the square tubes; besides, the buckling initiator also makes the
deformation more stable and uniform. As a further study, this
paper investigated the effectiveness of a similar buckling initiator
attached to an aluminum-alloy circular tube. Different from that
of square tubes, the buckling initiators could possess N (N ¼ 2, 3,
4) pulling strips uniformly distributed around the top edge of the
circular tubes. A series of quasi-static experiments was conducted
and the effects of the pre-hit height, the number of pulling strips
and the inclined angle of the strips were examined. Based on the
experimental results, a simplified model is developed which could
explain the deformation mechanism and predict the reductions in
the peak force and mean force of the circular tubes with buckling
initiators.
2. Experimental details
To investigate the effectiveness of the buckling initiators, two
series of aluminum-alloy circular tubes were employed, which
had the same dimensions, i.e. their outer radius and thickness
were, D0 ¼ 50.570.5 mm and t ¼ 1.370.05 mm, respectively.
However, their material properties are different because of the
heat treatment. These two kinds of circular tubes were denoted by
TA and TB, respectively. Fig. 1 plotted the quasi-static tensile test
results for the two materials, showing that they have the same
Young’s modulus E ¼ 65 GPa. It is noted that the material of TA is
much stronger than that of TB. The yield and ultimate stresses
of two materials are s0.2A ¼ 245 MPa and s0.2B ¼ 181 MPa,
suA ¼ 270 MPa and suB ¼ 210 MPa, respectively. Since, alumi-
num alloys are conventionally strain-rate insensitive, the effect of
strain-rate is ignored in this study.
As illustrated in Fig. 2(a), a buckling initiator is installed at the
top end of the circular tube, and is composed of a cylindrical
aluminum-alloy column with a radius r0 along the axis of the
circular tube and N pulling strips which are uniformly distributed
around the top edge of the tube. The top surface of middle column
is higher than the edge of the tube by h. The N pulling strips are
made of steel and connect to the bottom of the column and the
top edge of the tube by screws. The width and thickness of the
pulling strips are 10 and 0.5 mm, respectively, with their yield
stress and ultimate strain being 350 MPa and 0.2, respectively.
Material-TA
300
Material-TB
250
Stress (MPa)
200
150
100
50
0 Fig. 4 depicts a comparison of the loading curves of the two
0.00 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06
Strain (mm/mm)
Fig. 1. Quasi-static tensile tests for the materials of the tubes.
789
2r0
h
0
t L0
D0
N=3
Fig. 2. The design of the circular tube with buckling initiator.
During the compression tests of tubes, the deformation of the
column and strips can be ignored. The initial angle between the
strips and the horizontal level is denoted by y0. Thus, the length of
the strips is
ls ¼ ðR0  r 0 Þ= sin y0 (1)
where R0 ¼ D0/2 is the radius of the tube. A typical specimen is
shown in Fig. 2(b).
When the specimen is subjected to axial compression (or axial
impact), the crushing process has two distinct stages: in the first
stage, the crosshead (or the impinger) contacts the top of the
middle column and makes the strips to pull the tube wall inward;
in the second stage, the tube is compressed directly by the
crosshead and a progressive crushing in diamond mode occurs.
Because of the imperfections introduced by the buckling initiator
in the first stage, the initial buckling force in the second stage will
be greatly reduced and the deformation mode would be changed
from ring mode or mixed mode to diamond mode.
The quasi-static compression tests of the specimens were
conducted on a UTM machine at HKUST, whose upper limit of load
is 200 kN. The loading speed was set as 5 mm/min. In the tests, the
effects of the pre-hit height h, the number of pulling points N and
the inclined angle y were studied.
3. Experimental results
3.1. Compression of the original tubes
First, the original tubes of TA and TB were compressed
between the crosshead and the base plate on a UTM machine.
The tested original tubes are shown in Fig. 3. It can be seen that
the specimen of TA deformed in mixed mode, which means that
initially it deformed in ring mode, but after one or two layers of
ring folds, the deformation mode switched to diamond mode with
lobes N ¼ 3. By considering the friction between the crosshead
and the top layer of fold, the initial ring mode is resulted from this
friction constraint and the real natural crushing mode should be
the diamond mode. On the other hand, as shown in Fig. 3(c), the
deformation of TB was always in the ring mode. This result reveals
that although these two circular tubes have the same geometric
characteristics, their crushing modes could still be different
because of different yield stresses, and the stronger tubes tend
to deform in diamond mode while the weaker ones tend to be ring
mode.
0.07 kinds of circular tubes, where the mean crushing force Fm
is calculated by the total work done divided by the total
displacement. It is shown that initial peaks of the two circular
tubes are Fpeak ¼ 51.5 and 37.8 kN, while the mean forces at the
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790 X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797
Fig. 3. The deformation mode of the original circular tubes: (a) TA-side view; (b) TA-top view; (c) TB-side view.
60
Tube-A
Mean force T-A
Tube-B
Mean force T-B
40
Force (kN)
20
0 deformations of most specimens had transferred to diamond
0 20 40
Displacement (mm)
Fig. 4. The compression loading curves for the original tubes.
displacement 55 mm are Fm ¼ 23.8 and 17.7 kN, respectively.
According to the results from Ref. [18] it is found that the initial
crushing force for the relatively thick tubes can be predicted by
the yield force of the cross-section. By using the yield stress
measured above, the initial yield force for the two circular tubes
are FY ¼ 2pR0sYt ¼ 50.5 and 37.3 kN which show very good
agreements with the real measured peak forces.
3.2. Deformation mode of the tubes with buckling initiators
For the tube specimens with buckling initiators, considering
the radius of the original tubes was R0 ¼ 25 mm, the pre-hit
height h was chosen between 5 and 25 mm. For N ¼ 2 and 4, the
angle y0 remained to be 901; while for N ¼ 3, y0 ¼ 601 and 901
were studied. In the compression tests, although tubes TA and TB
had different material properties, their deformation modes were
quite similar. The deformation of a typical specimen in the first
stage of crushing is shown in Fig. 5(a). Initially, due to the pulling
of the strips, the tube wall near the pulling points moved inwards
while the parts far from the pulling points kept their original
shape. As a result, the top edge of the circular tube deformed from
a circle into a flower with N petals as shown in Fig. 5(b). However,
in the second stage of crushing, the deformation mode switched
to diamond mode, in which the tube wall progressively folded
into equilateral polygons with N corners and the angle between
two neighboring layers was p/N. Also, in the axial direction,
the corners at every layer of fold had a finite height as shown in
Fig. 5(c).
Figs. 6–8 show the top, bottom and side views of the tested
specimens for TB tubes with N ¼ 2, 3 and 4, respectively. It is
shown from Fig. 6(a) that the top layer of all the specimens
deformed in equilateral flowers with N ¼ 2 petals. With the
increase of pre-hit height h, the inward movements of the pulling
points were more serious and the corner at every petal became
sharper. This phenomenon is more clear for N ¼ 3 and 4 as shown
in Figs. 7(a) and 8(a). It was also observed in the experiments that
when h was smaller than 20 mm, the extension of the pulling
strips was very little; however, when h was larger than 25 mm, the
extension of the strips became significant due to the yielding of
the strips. For the specimens with h ¼ 30, the pulling strips broke,
which means that further increasing h after this value would be
more difficult. From the bottom view in Figs. 6(b)–8(b), it is found
that although for these specimens N ¼ 2 and 4, the subsequent
60 mode with N ¼ 3, i.e., the diamond mode with N ¼ 3 seemed to be
the most stable mode. The side views of the specimens show that
although most of the specimens could crush progressively, the
cases for N ¼ 2 and 4 had an unstable tendency to switch to Euler
buckling mode. The folding details will be analyzed in the next
sections.
The measured geometric data of the tested specimens are
listed in Table 1, in which l and de are the half fold-length and
effective stroke coefficient, respectively. The half fold-length l is
defined as the arc-length in the axial direction between the center
of a horizontal plastic hinge and the neighboring mid-point
of a corner (e.g., the arc-length between A and D in Fig. 13(b)).
It is clear that for the specimens with N ¼ 3, l and de are both
independent of h and y0, which have their average values
l ¼ 19 mm and de ¼ 0.74. For N ¼ 2 and 4, because their
deformations are not so stable and uniform, most of the geometric
data were not obtained.
3.3. The mean force and peak force
A typical loading–displacement curves of the specimen is
depicted in Fig. 9, showing that in the first stage, the load was
quite low and did not have a peak, because the compressive
loading was only resisted by the pulling strips. The total
displacement in the first stage was about h. When the crosshead
contacted the top edge of the tube wall in the beginning of the
second stage, the load increased sharply until a critical value Fpeak.
Then, the tube buckled and a progressive crushing took place. Due
to the imperfections generated in the first stage, Fpeak was
significantly lower than the original peak as shown in Fig. 4.
The mean forces and peak forces for all the specimens are
listed in Table 1, while Fig. 10(a) and (b) plot the comparison of the
peak force and mean force for the specimens TB with respect to
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X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797 791

Fig. 5. The deformation of the specimens: (a) side view in the first stage; (b) top view in the first stage; (b) side view in the second stage.

h=10mm h=15mm h=20mm h =25mm h=30mm

Fig. 6. Tested specimens for TB with N ¼ 2 and y ¼ 901: (a) top view; (b) bottom view and (c) side view.

the pre-hit height h. It is shown from Fig. 10(a) that with the same
number of pulling strips, the increase of the pre-hit height h will
reduce the initial peak force. After h was larger than 25 mm,
the reduction of the peak force became insignificant, because the
initial peak force was lower than the subsequent peaks. With the
same pre-hit height, the initial peak for N ¼ 2 is slightly higher
than those of N ¼ 3 and 4. As shown in Fig. 10(b), it is evident that
with the same number N, although the inclined angles of the
pulling strips are different, given suitable h, the same reduction
of the peak force can be achieved. On the other hand, it can be
seen that the mean force only depends on N, and the mean forces
for specimens of N ¼ 2 and 4 are higher than that of specimens of
N ¼ 3. Nevertheless, the change in the mean force is not so
significant.
4. Theoretical considerations and discussions
4.1. Geometric analysis
In the first stage of crushing, the middle column is firstly
pushed downwards so that the N strips pull the top edge of the
tube walls at the connected points. According to the observations
in Fig. 5, the deformation of axial cross-section through a pulling
point in this stage can be simplified as sketched in Fig. 11(a), in
which A is an original pulling point, O is the center of the column,
and D is the boundary point of the influenced area on the tube
wall. At the end of this stage, the column moves a distance h
and reaches the same horizontal level as the top edge of the tube.
As a result, point A moves and rotates to position A0 . Assume the
influenced length of the tube wall AD is l0, and the length of the
pulling strips is ls, while the final rotation angles of the inclined
tube wall and pulling strips are b and y, respectively. Then, at the
end of the first crushing stage, we have,
l0 sin b þ ls sin y ¼ R0  r 0 (2)

Based on the experimental results, the deformation and

loading details of the specimens with buckling initiators are
analyzed theoretically in this section. It should be noted that all
the analysis are based on rigid and perfectly plastic material
idealization.
l0 ð1  cos bÞ þ ls cos y ¼ ls cos y0 þ h (3)
On the other hand, from the top view, the deformation of the
tube wall in the first crushing stage can be simplified as shown in
Fig. 11(b) (e.g., for N ¼ 3), in which the pulled parts deform
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792 X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797

h=10mm h=15mm h=20mm h=25mm h=30mm

Fig. 7. Tested specimens for TB with N ¼ 3 and y ¼ 901: (a) top view; (b) bottom view and (c) side view.

h=10mm h=15mm h=20mm h=25mm h=30mm

Fig. 8. Tested specimens for TB with N ¼ 4 and y ¼ 901: (a) top view; (b) bottom view and (c) side view.

inwards and the parts far from the pulling points remain with
their original shape. The inward part A0 B curves inwards and has
the similar curvature as its original sharp AB, which can be seen in
Fig. 5(b). Therefore, the relationship between the horizontal
distance AA0 and the width of the undeformed part of tube edge
can be approximated by
h p i
l0 sin b ¼ 2R0 1  cos a
N
where a denotes the half central angle of an undeformed section
as shown in Fig. 11(b). In the above equations, the influenced
length l0 is independent of N and y0, and from the experimental
measurements, it can be estimated by the half fold-length
associated with elastic buckling as follows:
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
l0 ¼ 1:72 R0 t (5)
By combining Eqs. (2)–(5), the relationship between h/R and a
for different N and different initial inclined angle of strips y0 can
(4) be obtained numerically. The results for N ¼ 3 are plotted in
Fig. 12. It is shown that with the increase of h/R0, the half central
angle a decreases. However, when h reaches a critical value,
b becomes p/2 and a renders a minimum. It is revealed that even
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X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797 793

Table 1 crushing stage can be simplified as sketched in Fig. 13. Section

Experimental result for circular tubes with buckling initiators. ACGD is 1/2N of an entire circle along the circumference and has a
half fold-length l in the axial direction. When the tube is
No. h (mm) l (mm) de Fm (kN) Fp (kN)
compressed compactly, the cross-section along AD will be as
TA 0  0.74 23.8 51.5 shown in Fig. 13(b). The tube wall between A and E has been
TB 0 8 0.75 17.7 37.8 folded, while ED is always vertical during the deformation
TB-N3-60 5 19.25 0.75 16.9 32.8 process. Finally, E and F reach the same horizontal level. It should
10 19.25 0.74 16.1 30.0
15 19 0.74 16.3 28.2
be noted that the vertical space between D and E is taken by the
20 19.5 0.74 16.1 20.2(23.4) folded tube wall at FG. Therefore, the vertical distance of DE is
25 19.25 0.73 15.8 16.7(23.7) equal to that of AE. Supposed the arc-length between A and E is lh,
30 19 0.70 16.3 17.2(23.3) the horizontal distance of AE after folding is H, and the curvature
radius at point A is rh. Then, if the influence of the thickness is
TB-N3-90 10 19 0.74 17.2 34.3 ignored, the fold-length and effective energy absorbing stroke
15 19.25 0.74 15.9 30.7 coefficient de can be obtained by
20 18.5 0.73 16.2 26.9
25 18.5 0.73 16.4 21.4(24.3) 2r h lh  r h
30 18.25 0.71 16.8 19.2(24.2)
l ¼ lh þ r h and de ¼ 1  ¼ (6)
l lh þ r h
For the deformation shape in Fig. 13(b), if de is given, the length
TB-N2-90 10   18.3 37
lh and radius rh can be obtained as functions of H, with the details
15 16.4 0.70 19.7 34.3
20 18.75 0.76 18.0 29 being given in the Appendix A.
25   17.1 27.6 Fig. 14 shows the top cross-sectional view of a circular tube
30 15.2 0.74 18.5 27.7 with N ¼ 3 at point A after compression reaches compaction, in
which the solid line is the plastic hinges at this horizontal level.
TB-N4-90 10 18.25 0.75 18.2 31.1 The cross-section at point A changes from initially a circle shown
15 16.9 0.70 19.2 32.0 by the dashed curve to an equilateral triangle. With the
20 19 0.74 20.0 27.9 assumption that the tube wall experiences no extension along
25 18.25 0.74 18.4 18.9(23.3)
the circumference, and the curvature radius at the corners is
30 18.75 0.71 17.9 15.4(23.4)
ignored, we have

TA-N3-90 10 18.5 0.77 24.5 47.0 pR0

jACj ¼ Lx ¼ (7)
15 19.25 0.74 22.6 40.7 N
20 17.75 0.76 22.4 36.4
Considering the symmetry along the axis in Fig. 14, the angle
25 18.75 0.75 22.1 33.9
+ACE ¼ pR0/2N and the horizontal distance between A and E can
Notes: TA-N4-90 means specimen TA with N ¼ 4 and y0 ¼ 901; ‘  ’ means the be found as
value is not measured. p
pR0
H¼ tan (8)
N 2N
Also, the inclined plastic hinge EF in Fig. 13(a) can be obtained
30 as
N=3, θ=90°, h=25mm qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
F Lcp ¼ ðlh  r h Þ2 þ L2x (9)
25
Fm

20
4.2. Estimate of the peak forces
Force (kN)

15 To estimate the initial peak force of the circular tubes with

10
5 by the pulling strips and maintains its original shape. It should
0 undeformed edge BC. As a result, in the second stage when the
0 20 40 60 80
Displacement (mm)
Fig. 9. Loading curve for the specimen TB-N3-90 with h ¼ 25 mm.
the initial inclined angle y0 is different, a always takes the same
minimum value a ¼ 0.4, which depends on l0 only. Besides,
the influence of middle column is also considered. The results for
two values r0/R0 ¼ 0.1 and 0.2 are obtained, indicating that when
r0/R0o0.2, its influence can be ignored.
Based on the observations in Fig. 5(c), the deformation of a
representative section on the circular tube wall in the stable
buckling initiators, the deformation details at a typical section
near the top edge are analyzed. As shown in Fig. 15(a), at the end
of the first crushing stage, the tube wall near the pulling point
A has been pulled inwards to A0 , while section BC is not influenced
be noted that after moving inwards, A0 B is lower than the
crosshead compresses the tube directly, the contact area will
be reduced to N corner sections like BC.
Because, the tube wall A0 BD is curved but BCGD remains
unchanged, all the compressive loads will be carried by BCGD.
Consider the compression of a typical section BCGD in Fig. 15(a). If
the compressive stress is large enough, section BCGD will buckle
and a plastic hinge will occur along the dashed curve through
point T as shown in Fig. 15(b), where point T is located near the
middle of CG. Since, the original tube deforms in ring mode or
mixed mode whose initial peak force can be approximated by
the product of the yielding force and the cross-sectional area
(see Section 4.1), as a part of the tube, the buckling force of section
BCGD can be estimated by the yield force along the midline KT.
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794 X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797

As the relation between a and h/R0 has been obtained in the

45 1.2 previous section, by using Eq. (11), the initial buckling force of the
Fp N=2 tube in the second stage can be estimated. However, it should
40 Fm N=2 be noted that if the initial peak force is lower than the subsequent
Fp N=3 1.0
35 Fm N=3 peaks, further reduction of the initial peak will be meaningless.
Fp N=4 Therefore, the magnitude of the subsequent peaks still needs to be
30 Fm N=4 0.8 determined and compared with the initial one.
Force (kN)

25 The formation of every fold in the stable crushing stage starts

0.6 from a shape as shown in Fig. 16(a). Different from the top fold of
20 the tube as shown in Fig. 15(a), in this stage, points B and C have
merged together and A0 C is a straight horizontal plastic hinge.
15 0.4
Also, the shape along CD is much closer to a straight line. The
10 distance AA0 is
0.2 h  p i
5 p
jAA0 j ¼ R0 1  cot (12)
N N
0 0.0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Thus, the subsequent deformation of this fold at section A0 CGD
can be considered to consist of bending of A0 JKD and buckling of
Prehit height (mm)
JCKT. Since, KT located at the middle of CG and CD is
approximately straight, the buckling force of KT is estimated as
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
pR0
45 1.2 F p1 ¼ sY t (13)
2N
F-p θ=60
40 The compressive stress along A0 J comes from bending of section
Fm θ=60
1.0
35 Fp θ=90 A0 JKD, and the total force is the integration of the stress on every
Fm θ=90 strip of width dx as shown in Fig. 16(b). If the effect of the
30 0.8 transition section is ignored, the horizontal and vertical distances
Force (kN)

25 between A0 and D are

0.6
20 lx ¼ l sin c and ly ¼ l cos c (14)

15 0.4 In the above equations, l can be obtained from Eq. (6) and c can
be calculated by lx ¼ |AA0 |. After a finite bending, the part below
10 DK changes very little, the compression force on a strip of width
0.2
5 dx can be obtained as

0 0.0 2M p
dF ¼ dx (15)
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 l sin c
pffiffiffi
Prehit height: h (mm) where M p ¼ ð1=2 3ÞsY t 2 is the maximum plastic bending
moment per unit width of tube wall. For the strip at x position,
Fig. 10. Experimental results for peak forces and mean forces: (a) TB specimens
with y ¼ 901 and different N; (b) TB specimens with N ¼ 3 and different y.
the inclined angle is j, but l is a function of x as follows:

Nx
lðxÞ ¼ l (16)
pR0
Therefore, the total buckling force for a typical fold can be
A A’
approximated by
 !
0 Z 1
D ’ F ps t 1 1
ls R0 ¼ pffiffiffi dx þ (17)
O FY 3R0 ½1  ðp=NÞ  ð1= tanðp=NÞÞ 0:5 x 2
A’
According to Eq. (17), if t/R0 is smaller, Fps/FY will be smaller. It

A should be pointed out that the method of estimating the peak
B forces in this section can only be applied to the case of relatively
C
thick tubes which deform in ring mode or mixed mode.
Fig. 11. Geometric relationships of the specimen in the first crushing stage: (a)
side view; (b) top view.
4.3. Mean crushing force
Suppose the central angle of BC is a and the hinge along BKD can
be approximated by a quarter of sine curve with the point T Although numerous papers published have discussed the
located in the middle of CG, then the length of KT is modeling of axial crushing of circular tubes in ring mode, very
  few studies have been made about the energy absorption of
2 p circular tubes deformed in diamond mode. Pugsley and Macaulay
jKTj ¼ R0 aþ (10)
3 3N [2] proposed the first theoretical analysis in 1960s, followed by
Therefore, the initial buckling force of the whole circular tube in Pugsley [3] and Johnson and Soden [4], who made further
the second crushing stage can be approximated by improvements. However, these models only provided some basic
  ideas in analyzing this problem and were not accurate enough.
2 p F p 2N a 1 Recently, Marsolek and Reimerdes [16] used some patterns to
F p ¼ sY t2NR0 aþ and ¼ þ (11)
3 3N FY 3p 3 generate diamond mode and developed a model to predict the
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X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797 795

1.1 mean crushing force. However, some of their assumptions do not

agree with the observations in our experiments.
1.0 To estimate the mean crushing force, an energy method is
θ=90°, r0 /R 0=0.2
Half central angle of a corner α

applied to a typical tube section of length l. During the entire

0.9 θ=72°, r0 /R 0=0.2 compression process, the energy is dissipated by four distinct
θ=60°, r0 /R 0=0.2 mechanisms as follows:
0.8 θ=60°, r0 /R 0=0.1
(a) First, the original cylindrical tube wall is compressed to
0.7 become flat and the energy dissipated is
E1 ¼ 2plM p (18)
0.6
where Mp is the maximum plastic bending moment per unit
0.5 width of tube wall.
(b) A portion of energy is dissipated by the rotation of the
0.4 horizontal plastic hinges. According to the analysis given in
the Appendix A, the rotation angle along every horizontal
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 hinge is kcp, where kc is 1.2 for de ¼ 0.74. Therefore, the energy
Pre-hit height h/R0 dissipated is

Fig. 12. Relations between the pre-hit height h/R0 and half central angle of a
E2 ¼ 2pR0 M p kc p (19)
corner. (c) The energy dissipated at the inclined plastic hinges is

E3 ¼ 2NMp pLcp (20)

(d) Besides the horizontal and inclined plastic hinges, a great
portion of energy is dissipated by the traveling plastic hinges.
As shown in Fig. 13(a), the buckling of section EFGD starts
A
from an inclined plastic hinge ET. However, with the progress
2rh E of compression, this plastic hinge will gradually move from EC
A C to EF and then to ES. In the area where the plastic hinge
D
F passed by, the tube wall experienced bending and revised-
T λ
bending processes. According to the deformation mechanism,
E S Δ
G
the shadow area in Fig. 13(a) is the region where the plastic
D
hinge passed through. Suppose the curvature radius of plastic
H hinge is r, then the energy dissipated by the traveling hinges is

Fig. 13. Diagram for the deformation of the tubes in a typical region: (a) side-view; 2Mp
(b) cross-sectional view. E4 ¼ NLx l (21)
r
According the measurements in our experiments, the curvature
radius r is about 1.5 times of the tube’s wall thickness.
To sum up the above four portions, the total energy dissipated
by a half fold is
X  
R0
Ei ¼ 2pMp l þ kc pR0 þ 2NLcp þ l (22)
O i¼1;4
r
A
On the other hand, if the mean crushing force during this
E compression process is Fm, then the work done by the external
force is
H C (F)
W ¼ F m lde (23)
P
Fig. 14. The cross-sectional view in the stable crushing stage of the tube. In view of energy balance, we have, W ¼ iEi.
By using Eqs. (18)–(23), we can obtain the mean crushing force
of the circular tubes deforming in diamond mode as follows,
2 qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 3
Fm 2p 4 R0 ðlh  r h Þ2 þ L2x R0
¼ 1 þ kc p þ N þ 5 (24)
Mp de l l r
A’ O
C
B B C
D G 4.4. Discussions
K
T The initial peak forces estimated by Eq. (11) for N ¼ 3 and
y0 ¼ 901 with different h are plotted and compared with
D
G experimental results in Fig. 17. It is shown that this analysis can
predict very well the decreasing tendency of the initial peak force
Fig. 15. The initial buckling of the specimen in the second stage: (a) three with the increase of h, and the maximum reduction of the peak
dimensional diagram; (b) details at a typical corner. force could be more than 30%. However, the predicted curve is
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796 X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797

strips in our device greatly reduce the inertia, because in the

initial pulling stage, the involved mass is only the small part at the
dF end of the tube instead of the entire tube. In addition, in this
O theoretical analysis, the extension of the pulling strips is not
A’ considered, because it is only significant when h is quite large.
x A’
J
A

C ly 5. Summary and remarks


K 
T In this paper, a buckling initiator designed for reducing the
D initial peak force of axially crushed circular tubes is investigated.
G D lx This buckling initiator is installed near the impact end of a circular
tube and is composed of a pre-hit column along the tube’s axis
R0
and several pulling strips uniformly distributed around the top
edge of the tube. It functions just before the impact happens, and
Fig. 16. Buckling of a fold in the stable crushing stage: (a) three dimensional- can effectively reduce the initial buckling force without affecting
diagram; (b) cross-sectional view. the structural stiffness at normal working conditions. By using
aluminum-alloy thin-walled circular tubes with R/t ¼ 19, the
40 influences of the number of pulling strips N, pre-hit height h and
1.0 the inclined angle of the pulling strips have been all studied. The
35 results reveal that this buckling initiator could effectively reduce
the initial peak force and retain the excellent energy absorption of
30 0.8 the circular tube. By using this buckling initiator, the deformation
mode of the axial crushed circular tube switches from ring mode
25
force (kN)

0.6 or mixed mode to diamond mode. For the relatively thick tubes
20 which could deform in ring mode or mixed mode, although
specimens with N ¼ 2, 3 and 4 were tested, the stable deformation
15 0.4 tended to diamond mode with lobe number N ¼ 3. With suitable
Theoretical selection of pre-hit h, the initial peak force could be reduced by
10 Exp Fpeak
more than 30%. Based on the experimental results, the deforma-
Exp Fmean 0.2
Fs tion of the thin-walled tubes in diamond mode is analyzed in
5
Fm detail and a simplified theoretical analysis is conducted to reveal
0 0.0 the reduction of the initial force as well as the energy dissipation
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 mechanisms, showing good agreement with the experiments. For
pre-hit height h (mm) the application of this kind of devices, they can be used as energy
absorbers at the roadside or as part of the landing gears of small
Fig. 17. Comparison between theoretical analysis and the experiments for N ¼ 3. flying vehicles; for the automobile structures, in which the
proximal end of the tube is fixed, allocating the pulling points to
the middle of the tubes may be considered.

slightly lower than the experimental results, because in the

analysis the radius of the corners and inclined plastic hinges are Acknowledgements
neglected. The value of peak force in the stable crushing stage is
also estimated and plotted as the dotted line. When the initial This study is funded by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council
peak force is lower than the subsequent peaks, the further (RGC) under CERG Grant no. 621505 and the National Natural
reduction will be meaningless. Therefore, the level of subsequent Science Foundation of China under Key Project no. 10532020.
peaks can be regarded as the lower limit of the peak force. Their supports are gratefully acknowledged.
Considering the stroke coefficient of the tubes is about
de ¼ 0.74 and using Eq. (6), we have rh/lh ¼ 0.15. Therefore, from
Fig. A2 in the Appendix A, j ¼ 0.3, so that kc ¼ 1.20 and Appendix A. Geometric analysis for the folds in the axial
lh ¼ 1.25 H. For N ¼ 3 and H ¼ 0.6R0, the mean crushing forces direction
predicted by Eq. (24) for TA and TB are Fm ¼ 22.7 and 16.8 kN,
respectively. These estimations agree very well with the experi- Consider a fold of the tube wall shown in Fig. 13(b). The
ments (Fm ¼ 23.6 and 17.7 kN, for TA and TB, respectively). configuration of the folded part can be simplified as shown in
It should be noted that under impact scenarios two kinds of
dynamic effects, namely, strain-rate and inertia effects, will make
the structure and material stronger. The strain-rate effect depends
on the material itself; for the strain-rate insensitive materials, this
effect can be ignored. On the other hand, the inertia effect
l
depends on the impact velocity V as well as the mass ratio M/m r 
(where M and m denote the masses of the impinger and the tube,
respectively); it will become much weaker for larger mass ratio
and lower velocity. According to the study in [18], in the axial
crushing of aluminum-alloy tubes, the dynamic effects can be
H
ignored for M/m4100 and Vo10 m/s. Also, different from the
conventional study of tubes under axial crushing, the pulling Fig. A1. The cross-sectional view of a typical half fold.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS

X.W. Zhang et al. / Thin-Walled Structures 47 (2009) 788–797 797

0.25 Thus,

l ð2 cos j  1Þ r 1
residual height of a half-fold Δ/λ

¼ and ¼ ¼ 1  de (A4)
0.20 r sin j l ðp þ 2jÞ þ ð2 cos j1Þ sin j

The horizontal fold-length is

0.15  
cos jð2 cos j  1Þ
H ¼ 2rð1 þ sin jÞ þ l cos j ¼ r 2ð1 þ sin jÞ þ
sin j
(A5)
0.10
and

0.05 ½2ð1 þ sin jÞ þ ðcos jð2 cos j  1Þ= sin jÞ

H¼l (A6)
ðp þ 2jÞ þ ðð2 cos j  1Þ= sin jÞ

After folding, the residual height of a half fold is D ¼ r. Hence,

0.00
Eqs. (A4)–(A6) give the relationships among D/l, l/H and j, which
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2
are depicted in Figs. A2 and A3. For a given j, kc ¼ (1+2j/p), and
inclined angle of the straight segment ϕ the parameters de ¼ D/l, kl ¼ l/H. Therefore, the relation between
Fig. A2. The relationship between D/l and j.
de and kl could be obtained.

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