Design optimization of regular hexagonal thin-walled columns with crashworthiness criteria

New functional requirements stimulate a rapid development of novel structural members. This paper presents a crashworthiness design of the regular hexagonal thin-walled columns for different sectional profiles. To formulate the complex crashworthiness design problem, the surrogate model method, more specifically, the response surface method (RSM), is utilized. The design of experiments (DoE) of the factorial design and D-optimal criterion techniques is employed to construct the response surface (RS) for the objective of specific energy absorption (SEA) and the constraint of maximum peak load (Max PL), respectively. In this study, the singly celled and multiply celled hexagonal columns are taken into account with the different sectional configurations. A comparison is made between these different hexagonal profiles, and the crashworthiness merits of multiply connected (MC) sections of the singly celled configuration and the side-connected section of triply celled configuration are quantified.