Crashworthiness design of horsetail-bionic thin-walled structures under axial dynamic loading

Bio-inspired engineering design has drawn increased attention in recent years for the excellent structural and mechanical properties of the biological systems. In this study, the horsetail-bionic thin-walled structures (HBTSs) were investigated for their crashworthiness under axial dynamic loading. Six HBTSs with different cross section configurations (i.e., number of cells) were evaluated using nonlinear finite element (FE) simulations. To obtain the optimal design of the HBTSs, an ensemble metamodel-based multi-objective optimization method was employed to maximize the specific energy absorption while minimizing maximum impact force of the HBTSs. Using the ensemble metamodeling, FE simulations and the NSGA-II algorithm, the Pareto optimum designs of all six HBTSs were obtained and the HBTS with 16 cells were found to have the best crashworthiness. An optimum design of the HBTS with 16 cells was verified using FE simulation and found to have good agreement with simulation results.