Abstract
Recently, automobiles are the most useful and indispensable products in our life. But, contrary to the benefits, a great number of people are injured or killed by automobile accidents every year. Therefore, it is strongly demanded to ensure against the risks of automobile accidents. The intensity of the crush energy is enormous so that an engine block penetrates into the cabin to injure the driver and passengers. Hence the prismatic shell structures are installed at the back of the front bumper so as to absorb the crush energy. However, there is no exact analysis of the crush mechanism, although numerical calculation has been done. The numerical calculation occasionally gives an inadequate result, that is, the rack of the reliability and also takes too much cost. The aim of this paper is to clear the buckling phenomena of the shell columns and to contribute to the actual design of the structures.
