Experimental and simulation study of mild steel response to lateral quasi-static compression

Abstract

Collision of structure of a vehicle is not limited to the axial direction but it can occur laterally. The purpose of this paper is to present a study of the energy absorption behavior of different length of the circular mild steel tube under lateral crushing. A ring/tube (length of 10 mm, 35 mm, and 60 mm), 60 mm diameter and 1.5 mm thickness is compressed quasi-statically. Maximum loading setup to Instron machine was 50 kN. The speed of compression is 5mm/min. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) it used to validate the experimental work to ensure of getting accurate results. Numerical results of energy absorption and collapse load showed respectively 96.52% and 94.36% agreement with experimental results. The theoretical results showed 14.37% deviation with experimental and 15.5% with numerical results. The specimen with 60 mm length leads to better energy absorption than the other specimens. The results obtained numerically and experimentally in addition to theoretically showed the energy absorbed and collapse load varies with the length of the tube.