A Study on Axial Collapse Characteristics of Spot Welded Double-Hat Shaped Section Members by FEM

The widely used spot welded section members of vehicles are structures which absorb most of the energy in a front-end collision. In front-end collision, sufficiently absorbed in the front parts, the impact energy does not reach the passengers. Simultaneously, the frame gets less damaged. This structures have to be very stiff, but collapse progressively to absorb the kinetic energy as expected. In the view of stiffness, the double-hat shaped section member is stiffer than the hat shaped section member. In progress of collapse, the hat shaped section member is collapsing progressively, but the double-hat shaped section member does not due to stiffness. An analysis on the hat shaped section member was previously completed. This paper concerns the collapse characteristic of the double-hat shaped section member. In the program system presented in this study, an explicit finite element code, LS-DYNA3D is adopted for simulating complicate collapse behavior of double hat shaped section members with respect to spot weld pitches. And comparing with the results from the quasi-static and impact experiment, the simulation has been verified.