Crashworthiness performance of hybrid energy absorbers using PET-G honeycomb structure

The authors report an experimental investigation on square thin-walled energy absorbers with different topologies and materials. The material was steel SAE 1010 and aluminum AL 6160. Some samples non-filled and filled with polymeric material received patterned windows placed in opposite faces with specific dimensions: 20x20, 15x30, and 20x30 mm(2). Quasi-static axial loading crushes hollow specimens and hybrid specimens filled with PET-G honeycomb. The core filling was printed using the FDM technique. The crashworthy ability of specimens was evaluated based on the specific energy absorption (SEA), load ratio (LR) and structural efficiency (eta), which showed that windowed-filled specimens with 20x30 mm(2) perform better. The maximum increase of SEA was 212%, LR decreased from 4.02 to 1.78 and eta increased from 0.45 to 0.89 for steel energy absorbers and in the same manner, the values for aluminum specimens were 123%, 2.97 to 1.28 and 0.46 to 0.71. The effects of the patterned windows and their combination with the honeycomb core for both metallic materials show that such a topology improved the performance in two factors. The windows reduced the peak force, and the PET-G honeycomb furnished a smoothing to the region at the end of the fold formation, contributing to the crashworthy ability. Future work envisages experimental testing of the samples in dynamic tests.