Abstract:

In order to overcome the traditional thin-walled tubes’ shortcomings of constant crashworthiness and poor environmental adaptability， a conception of magnetorheological bionic energy-absorbing element （MBEE） is proposed， which is inspired by the structure of horsetailand can be applied to the design of thin-walled tube. The theoretical modelfor the energy-absorption of magnetorheological bionicelement and the theoretical formulae of energy absorbing controllability are established and a simulation is conducted on the MBEE with certain size. The results show that in the condition of certain size and compression， the differences of the energy-absorption amount of magnetorheological fluid and solid structure predicted by fluid-solid coupling and solid structure simulations and theoretical values are 3.49% and 2.16% respectively. The energy absorbingcontrollability of MBEEreduces with the increase of compressed length， which can be as high as 27.73% at most and can still be 12.29% at 67% of compressed length. The controllability value predicted by simulationis highly consistent with theoretical value. Finally， the MBEE with certain size is filled into the traditional 9-cell thin-walled tubefor simulation with a result indicating that compared with 9-cell thin-walled tube， the total energy-absorption amount of the thin-walled tube filled with MBEE increases by 293.7%， andthe specific energy absorption of solid structure rises by 62.54% with the maximum controllability reaching 22.44%.

Key words: thin-wall tube, magnetorheological fluid, bionic structure, crashworthiness, energy absorbing controllability