EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF DOUBLE HAT COMPOSITE CRASHBOX STRUCTURE UNDER AXIAL CRUSHING

• Main Author: Rizal Fauzi, Fahmi
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/34095
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Transportation safety is highly important along with increasing levels of human mobility. The structure of the vehicle must be designed as safe as possible and meet the standards of crashworthiness so that fatal injuries can be avoided when an accident occurs. One of structure that especially designed to absorb energy during crash is crashbox. In other way the use of composite materials such as carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) is increasing and continues to be developed to make the structure lighter without neglecting its strength. Composite research itself is quite challenging because composite failure modes are diverse and complex. Based on these reasons, research of composite crashbox is interesting to carry out. In this study, an energy absorption of double hat CFRP column due to dynamic axial crushing was conducted by experimental and numerical method. Numerical modeling was done using LS-Dyna software. The material model used in this numerical simulation is *MAT54_ENHANCED_COMPOSITE_DAMAGE. The manufacture of specimens is carried out manually by hand lay-up method with heat treatment and vacuum bag application during curing process. The material used is carbon fiber with epoxy resin matrix. Specimen testing was carried out with impact drop tower testing machine. Parameters were varied in the form of the number of lamina layers that compose the structures consisting of 3 plies, 6 plies and 9 plies. The outputs generated from this study are specimen manufacturing parameters, failure mode of composite crashbox structure, curve of force-displacement, and specific energy absorption of the structures. The experimental results are also compared with the results of numerical simulations. Numerical and experimental data show a good correlation. The result shows that error values of mean crushing force and peak force between average of experimental data and simulation data with trigger application are under 3.5% for each laminate configuration. Based on the experimental and numerical result, it can conclude that the more lamina composes the composites structure more effective in absorbing energy.