Many aspects to improve damage tolerance of collapsible composite energy absorber devices

The behaviour of core and core-less composite elliptical thin walled tubes subjected to quasi-static axial crushing is examined experimentally. The core-less tubes have two different arrangement systems (single and double). For the core tubes, natural cellular fibre was used as filler. Experiments showed that the crushing behaviours of the core-less-tubes were found to be sensitive to their ellipticity ratio. Catastrophic failure mode is eradicated by both arrangement system and the existence of the core, while the elastic energy is significantly suppressed by the existence of the core. The presence of core have shown significant enhancement in tubes damage tolerance and energy absorption per unit volume compared to the core-less tubes.