Optimization Of The Energy Absorption Characteristics Of Honeycomb Material Under In-plane Impact And Its Application In The Crashworthiness Design Of An Electric Vehicle

As a light material with stable plastic deformation and high energy absorption, honeycomb material is widely used in aerospace, automotive and construction industries. The current research on the impact properties of honeycomb material mainly focuses on its energy absorption under out-of-plane crushing, namely the impact velocity direction is parallel to the axial direction of honeycomb material. And new research shows that it can reflect their own advantages and has the engineering application value to study on the honeycomb material under in-plane crushing. Therefore, this paper concentrates on the energy absorption of honeycomb material under in-plane crushing and honeycomb material application to a small pure electric vehicle improve its crash worthiness.Firstly, this paper studies the influence of the five geometric parameters of honeycomb material filled in the fixed area including the thickness of the inclined edge tι, the thickness of the vertical edge th, the length of inclined edgeι, the length of vertical edge h and the angle θ between the inclined edge and the vertical edge on total mass, the total energy absorption and specific energy absorption using the finite element method. It is found that while an increase in the thickness of the inclined edge tιand the thickness of the vertical edge th enhances total mass, the total energy absorption and specific energy absorption of honeycomb material, increases in the length of inclined edgeι, the length of vertical edge h have adverse effects on the all output. As the angle θ between the inclined edge and the vertical edge increases, total mass and the total energy absorption appear the trend from decreasing to increasing, while the specific energy absorption shows an increased first and then decreased.Then, it takes the five geometric parameters of honeycomb material filled in the fixed area as design variables and makes the minimum of total mass and the maximum of the total energy absorption design objective to execute multi-objective optimization based on response surface method under different speed in-plane crushing. And it obtains the Pareto frontier curve of the multi-objective optimization. Finally, the conclusions are listed below:it shows positive correlation between total mass and the total energy absorption and the in-plane crush speed has the influence on the best geometric parameters of the honeycomb material.Finally, honeycomb material is applied to a small electric vehicle. And it takes that honeycomb material is good for crashworthiness of this electric vehicle through the comparison of the acceleration and energy absorption between the original model and improved model.This study and conclusions provide an important guidance for the energy absorption of honeycomb material under in-plane crushing and car crashworthiness.