Crashworthiness of straight section hydroformed aluminium tubes

There exists considerable motivation to reduce vehicle weight through the adoption of lightweight materials, such as aluminium alloys, while maintaining energy absorption and component integrity under crash conditions. The interaction between tube hydroforming and behaviour during crash events was studied using lightweight automotive structural members. Dynamic crush tests were performed on 400 mm length sections of both non-hydroformed and hydroformed EN-AW 5018 aluminium alloy tubes. The force versus crush distance data from 76.2 mm diameter non-hydroformed tubes was compared with results from 76.2 mm square cross-section hydroformed tubes of 2.0 and 3.5 mm initial tube thicknesses. The hydroforming operation was performed using a high-pressure process in which the corner radius of the tube cross-section was varied. Explicit dynamic finite element simulations of the hydroforming and crash events were carried out with particular attention to the transfer of forming history from the hydroforming simulations to the crash models. The values of the tube thickness, work hardening, residual stress, and damage level at the end of the hydroforming simulation were used as the initial state for the crash model. The Gurson–Tvergaard–Needleman constitutive model was used to account for damage based on void nucleation, growth, and coalescence. Numerical predictions of the force versus crush distance response were compared to experimental data. The results have demonstrated that it is important to account for thickness changes and work hardening from previous forming operations, in simulating crash events. The energy absorbing capabilities of the hydroformed aluminium tubes decreased with sharper corner radius due to increased thinning of the material during the hydroforming process. It was found that the simulations slightly over-predicted the mean crush force compared to the experimental data.