A Study on Influence of Initiator on Crash Performance of Thin-Walled Beam

The objective of the paper is to investigate the effect of crash initiator design on thin-walled beam crash performance. The investigations were conducted through a combined approaches of numerical simulation and experimental test. A numerical analysis was carried out via a thin-walled finite element model with the varied location, depth, width, orientation of the crash initiator and spacing between crash initiators. The effects of different designs on force, deformation and energy absorption of thin - walled beam were explored. The results show that initiator location can affect the deformation mode significantly, and the increasing depth of initiator leads to the decrease of peak value of impact force.