NOVEL IMPACT ATTENUATOR

Abstract

The capacity of materials and structures to dissipate the impact energy generated by impulse forces (collisions, explosions, etc.) raises great interest in applications from vehicle industry – terrestrial, nautical or spatial – for increasing security of passengers and goods, as well as in applications from civil engineering – for protection of high security buildings. This paper presents a novel impact attenuator made of a multi-layered cellular structure - ExpaAsym. The analysis regards the main conditions an attenuator should fulfill in order to be efficient: the damage curve – which should be relatively constant during the deformation; the distance to compaction – which is expected to be higher, preferably more than 80% of the initial height; maximum initial load force – which should be as close as possible to the value of the average load force; the dissipated energy, respectively the area beyond the force-displacement curve – which is expected to be as large as possible. The results of the numerical analysis prove the feasibility of the novel proposed system.