Energy absorbed by composite conical structures in axial crushing

Recently crashworthiness trend is the use of thin-walled composite impact attenuators in specific vehicle zones, ensuring kinetic energy absorption. The present paper addresses the composite conical structures design using an analytical approach for predicting energy dissipation in a controlled way. A balance of internal energies involved in the absorption and external force yields the average crush load and the total displacement through a numerical method. Comparison between theory and experiments shows the efficiency of the proposed relatively simple model for predicting energy absorption of axially collapsing composite shells.