The Energy Absorption Behavior of Cruciforms Designed by Kirigami Approach

Abstract

The cruciforms are widely employed as energy absorbers in ships and offshore structures, or basic components in sandwich panel and multicell structure. The kirigami approach is adopted in the design of cruciform in this paper for the following reasons. First, the manufacture process is simplified. Second, it can alter the stiffness distribution of a structure to trigger desirable progressive collapse modes (PCMs). Third, the kirigami pattern can be referred as a type of geometric imperfection to lower the initial peak force during impact. Experiments and numerical simulations were carried out to validate the effectiveness of kirigami approach for cruciform designs. Numerical simulations were carried out to perform comparative and parametric analyses. The comparative studies among single plate (SP), single plate with kirigami pattern (SPKP), and kirigami cruciform (KC) show that the normalized mean crushing force of KC is nearly two times higher than those of SP and SPKP, whereas the normalized initial peak force of KC reduces by about 20%. In addition, the parametric analyses suggest that both the parameters controlling the overall size (i.e., the global slenderness and local slenderness) and those related to the kirigami pattern (i.e., the length ratio and the relative position ratio) could significantly affect the collapse behavior of the cruciforms.