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Thin-walled multi-celled tubes with various configurations have been extensively employed in the application of energy-absorbing equipment due to their excellent mechanical properties. Based on the non-dimensional parameters ( R G , R T and ω ) proposed by the authors and their co-workers, the crashworthiness of thin-walled tubes increases monotonically with the magnitudes of ω , which is determined by R T / R G . Increasing R T or decreasing R G improves ω and the crashworthiness of tubes. This study aims to obtain higher the magnitudes of ω by introducing corner elements within the cross-section of multi-celled tubes to increase R T , while maintain a constant R G , a parameter related to the total side length of the tube’s cross-section. The crushing behaviours of a corner element with two panels is firstly investigated using finite element models. Subsequently, four corner elements are introduced by placing them at either the central or peripheral region of a square multi-celled tube. The crashworthiness of such multi-celled tubes reinforced with corner elements (MTRCs) is systematically investigated through axial compressive tests, numerical simulations and theoretical analyses. The results manifest that the MTRCs exhibit superior performance in terms of the load-bearing capacity, energy absorption and fluctuations of crushing force. Moreover, the angle of corner elements is a critical parameter that has a significant impact on the crashworthiness of the MTRCs. By adopting the R G , R T and ω , the theoretical models for the MCF of all the MTRCs proposed are derived. Among all the tubes proposed, MTRC-P2 has the largest ω , which is 7.45, resulting in the highest mean crushing force ( MCF ), and its MCF (61.35 kN) is 63% and 31% higher than that of the conventional square tube and multi-celled square tube, respectively. Furthermore, compared with other typical multi-celled tubes, MTRC-P2 has a 2% to 48% improvement in the specific energy absorption ( SEA ) compared to these tubes.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.