It is widely known that the availability of lightweight structures with excellent energy absorption capacity is essential for numerous engineering applications. Inspired by many biological structures in nature, bio-inspired structures have been proved to exhibit a significant improvement over conventional structures in energy absorption capacity. Therefore, use of the biomimetic approach for designing novel lightweight structures with excellent energy absorption capacity has been increasing in engineering fields in recent years. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in the development of bio-inspired structures for energy absorption applications. In particular, we describe the unique features and remarkable mechanical properties of biological structures such as plants and animals, which can be mimicked to design efficient energy absorbers. Next, we review and discuss the structural designs as well as the energy absorption characteristics of current bio-inspired structures with different configurations and structures, including multi-cell tubes, frusta, sandwich panels, composite plates, honeycombs, foams, building structures and lattices. These materials have been used for bio-inspired structures, including but not limited to metals, polymers, fibre-reinforced composites, concrete and glass. We also discussed the manufacturing techniques of bio-inspired structures based on conventional methods, and adaptive manufacturing (3D printing). Finally, contemporary challenges and future directions for bio-inspired structures are presented. This synopsis provides a useful platform for researchers and engineers to create novel designs of bio-inspired structures for energy absorption applications.

A review of recent research on bio-inspired structures and materials for energy absorption applications

Over the past several decades, a noticeable amount of research efforts has been directed to minimising injuries and death to people inside a structure that is subjected to an impact loading. Thin-walled (TW) tubular components have been widely employed in energy absorbing structures to alleviate the detrimental effects of an impact loading during a collision event and thus enhance the crashworthiness performance of a structure. Comprehensive knowledge of the material properties and the structural behaviour of various TW components under various loading conditions is essential for designing an effective energy absorbing system. In this paper, based on a broad survey of the literature, a comprehensive overview of the recent developments in the area of crashworthiness performance of TW tubes is given with a special focus on the topics that emerged in the last ten years such as crashworthiness optimisation design and energy absorbing responses of unconventional TW components including multi-cells tubes, functionally graded thickness tubes and functionally graded foam filled tubes. Due to the huge number of studies that analysed and assessed the energy absorption behaviour of various TW components, this paper presents only a review of the crashworthiness behaviour of the components that can be used in vehicles structures including hollow and foam-filled TW tubes under lateral, axial, oblique and bending loading.

https://myresearchspace.uws.ac.uk/ws/files/1765038/Paper_2.pdf

On the crashworthiness performance of thin-walled energy absorbers: Recent advances and future developments

Optimization for structural crashworthiness and energy absorption has become an important topic of research attributable to its proven benefits to public safety and social economy. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the important studies on design optimization for structural crashworthiness and energy absorption. First, the design criteria used in crashworthiness and energy absorption are reviewed and the surrogate modeling to evaluate these criteria is discussed. Second, multiobjective optimization, optimization under uncertainties and topology optimization are reviewed from concepts, algorithms to applications in relation to crashworthiness. Third, the crashworthy structures are summarized, from generically novel structural configurations to industrial applications. Finally, some conclusions and recommendations are provided to enable academia and industry to become more aware of the available capabilities and recent developments in design optimization for structural crashworthiness and energy absorption.

On design optimization for structural crashworthiness and its state of the art

Yong Zhang

Papers

Optimization of foam-filled bitubal structures for crashworthiness criteria

Out-of-plane crashworthiness of bio-inspired self-similar regular hierarchical honeycombs

Crushing analysis for novel bio-inspired hierarchical circular structures subjected to axial load

Crashworthiness design of novel hierarchical hexagonal columns

Crashworthiness behavior of Koch fractal structures