Energy absorption of pressurized thin-walled circular tubes under axial crushing

By pressurizing cellular materials, honeycombs, or thin-walled structures, their energy absorption can be greatly enhanced, and this enhancement can be controlled by the applied pressure. This concept shines light on the possibility of achieving adaptive energy absorption. To investigate the effect of internal pressure on energy absorption of thin-walled structures, this paper presents a study of axial crushing of pressurized thin-walled circular tubes. In the experiments, three groups of circular tubes with radius/thickness ratio R/t=120–200 were axially compressed under different pressurizing conditions. The results show that with an increase of internal pressure, the deformation mode switches from diamond mode with sharp corners to that with round corners, and eventually to ring mode. In diamond mode, the mean force of the tubes increases linearly with internal pressure. The enhancement comes from two mechanisms: direct effect of pressure and indirect effect due to interaction between pressure and tube wall. After the deformation switches to ring mode, the enhancement resulting from the second mechanism becomes weaker. Based on experimental observations, the deformation mode, energy dissipation mechanisms as well as interaction between internal pressure and tube wall are analyzed theoretically and the theoretical results are in good agreement with the experimental ones.