An investigation on the energy absorption characteristics of multi-cell square tubes

Due to increasing applications of thin-walled structures, especially as energy absorber, considerable researches have been made about them. In this paper, firstly, behavior of simple and multi-cell square tubes with equal cells is studied analytically, experimentally and numerically. Then, it is shown that for 3 x 3 square tubes with unequal cells, adding the partitions at corners increases energy absorption capacity of the tubes. Furthermore, the Zhang's formula for prediction of mean crushing load (MCL) is revised to inclusion of unequal cells square tubes; then, analytical and numerical results are validated with experiments. Finally, it is shown that the energy absorption capacity of the proposed new multi-cell square section is about 227% greater than that of simple section. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.