Abstract
Composites have wide applications in aerospace vehicles and automobiles because of the inherent flexibility in their design lot improved material properties. Composite tubes in particular, are potential candidates for their use as energy absorbing elements in crashworthiness applications due to their high specific energy absorbing capacity and the stroke efficiency. Their failure mechanism however is highly complicated and rather difficult to analyze. This includes fracture in fibers, in the matrix and in the fiber-matrix interface in tension, compression and shear. The purpose of this study is to investigate the energy absorption characteristics of Gr/E(Graphite/Epoxy) tubes on static and impact tests. The collapse characteristics and energy absorption of a variety of tubes have been examined. Changes in the lay-up which increased the modulus increased the energy absorption of the tubes. Based on the test results, the following remarks can be made: Among CA15, CA00 and CA90 curves the CA90 tube exhibits the highest crush load throughout the whole crush process, and max load increases as interlaminar number increase. Among all the tubes type CC90 has the largest specific crushing stress of 52.60 kJ/kg which is much larger than other tubes.
