A Novel Theoretical Approach for Estimation of Axial Crushing Behavior of Polygonal Hollow Sections
Ahmad Malekshahi, Kourosh Heidari Shirazi, Mohammad Shishesaz, Mohammad Hosseini
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to introduce new crushing mechanisms in terms of crushing modes for estimating the crushing force and absorbed energy of polygonal thin walled metal sections subjected to axial progressive collapse. For this purpose, two models were developed. The first model, which has been extensively used before and named as “plastic hinge model” (PHM), was modified based on new crushing modes; and as the second, a novel model was introduced by the authors named as “induced curvature model” (ICM). The latter model was considered to be more realistic than the former due to consideration of metal sheet curvatures during progressive folding process, as well as including the hardening effect of the material during plastic deformation. All possible crushing modes for a typical polygonal section were considered and discussed by combining different crushing modes of the corner elements. New expressions for the absorbed energies and crushing force were presented based on the resulting crushing modes. To evaluate the validity and efficiency of the proposed models, a detailed FE simulation was conducted using LS-DYNA. Comparison of FEM, PHM and ICM results showed the superiority of the ICM over PHM.