Lateral crushing behaviour and theoretical prediction of thin-walled rectangular and square tubes

One of the important topics in impact engineering was lateral crushing behaviour of thin-walled tube. In this study, crushing behaviours of rectangular and square tubes are investigated through lateral crushing testing and theoretical analysis. The average crushing force of the rectangular tube is smaller than that of the square tube. These two types of tubes have identical crushing mechanism, including two crushing stages. Plastic models are built based on the observed crushing behaviour. Theoretical solution for each stage is developed to predict the average crushing force of rectangular and square tubes.