engleski

Crush performance of foam filled tubes made of aluminium alloys at different loading conditions

Road transport is one of the major sources of CO2-emissions, the main greenhouse gas. Legislation and regulations have initiated the vehicle manufacturers to reduce the environmental impact of their products and manufacturing processes. To achieve this, they have been encouraged to use lightweight environmentally friendly materials for reducing the weight of their vehicle’s body and therefore reduce the vehicle’s fuel consumption (lower CO2-emissions), as well providing enhanced safety, comfort and performance and maximizing the fuel efficiency. This can be achieved based on the multi-material concept in design by using a combination of light and cellular metals. This study presents the developed and testing of lightweight structures filled with different cellular metals (e.g. open and closed-cell foams) for use as fillers in multifunctional construction elements for energy and sound absorption and vibration damping. New technologies and strategies have been also considered in order to fabricate structures which are easily molded into any shape or size as per requirements, as well as to eliminate the additional joining step which is one of the main cost drivers of multi-material-design in the automotive industry. New in-situ and ex-situ aluminum structures have been developed wherein the joining between the filler and hollow structures is achieved during the formation of the filler (e.g. aluminum alloy foam), or the previously prepared filler is directly inserted into the hollow structures, respectively. This paper presents the main results of this study in which the crush performance and deformation modes were evaluated using uniaxial compressive and three-point bending tests supported by infrared thermography. The results have shown that these new in-situ structures have a superior mechanical performance ensuring a high ductility and a very good crashworthiness behaviour since they deform under compressive and bending loads without formation of cracks and without abrupt failure. The results have also indicated that a good interface bonding contributes to a more axisymmetric compressive deformation. We believe that the incorporation of such structures into the automotive structures can further reduce the vehicle weight, increase the active safety in case of an accident and increase the passive safety by reducing the noise and vibrations while driving.

Aluminium alloy foam; Foam-filled structures; Compressive behaviour; Deformation mode

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