Recently, compatibility of crush safety performance and light weight construction are demanded in the impact absorption structural members in various vehicles. In the present paper, energy absorption characteristics of various thin-walled polygonal tubes under dynamic axial load are numerically analyzed by finite element method. In addition to the influences of stiffened ribs on impact strength in square, hexagonal and circular tubes, the energy absorption capacities of hexagonal tubes with rib was investigated under various factors such as cell size, material of members and correlation of thickness of the rib and cell. As the result, it has been clarified adding ribs to the various thin-walled tubes would be effective for improvement of crashworthiness. That is, the existence of reinforced rib stabilizes dynamic collapse behavior and enhances the energy absorbing efficiency as well as the absorbed energy which is considerably improved by choosing appropriate thickness of the rib and cell.
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