On October 13, TIAN Kun, ZHANG Yuan and ZHAO Qi, undergraduate students from School of Aerospace Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Tongji University, published in the International Journal of Mechanical Science a paper entitled Enhancing Energy Absorption of Circular Tubes under Oblique Loads through Introducing Grooves of Non-Uniform Depths, which explored the deformation and energy absorption performances of non-uniform grooved thin-wall pipe structure under oblique loads, and showed the application of the novel structure in anti-collision energy absorption.

In this paper, non-uniform grooving is introduced to change the deformation mode of thin-wall circular tubes under oblique loads, thus improving their energy absorbing performance and realizing the adaptive deformation of structures under different loads in case of poor performance of common energy absorption and anti-collision structures under oblique loads. The authors made a systematic analysis of the non-uniform grooved thin-wall pipe structure from three perspectives of theory, experiment and simulation. The research results were applicable to such engineering scenarios as safety of vehicle collision and buffer for spacecraft landing.

The research project funded by the 13th Student Innovation Training Program (SITP) for Tongji University students was completed under the guidance of YANG Fan, an Associate Professor from School of Aerospace Engineering and Applied Mechanics. In the course of the project, LI jun, ZHU liming and ZHU Jinlong, teachers from the School also offered their help to the students who completed their experiments in the Mechanical Experiment Center of the School, and did their simulation by using resources from Shanghai Supercomputing Center.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2019.105239