Bending collapse of thin-walled circular tubes and computational application

This paper focuses on describing the bending collapse behavior of thin-walled circular tubes. In this paper, global energy equilibrium theory is applied to derive the relationship between the applied moment and the bending angle of circular tubes. A general bending collapse mode of circular tubes is referenced for the derivation, and it is assumed that during bending crush, all impact energy is absorbed and distributed along the hinge lines. After obtaining the relationship, it is compared to a published theory of tubular structure's bending resistance, which was obtained from analytical and experimental studies. The derived bending resistance is then applied to generate simplified circular tube models, which have different cross-sections and are made of different materials. Crashworthiness analyses are performed on these simplified models as well as detailed tube models, and the crash results are compared to verify the efficiency of the generated simplified model and the accuracy of the derived tube's bending resistance. All the problems involved in this paper are solved by means of LS-DYNA. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.