DESIGN AND ENERGY ABSORPTION CAPACITY STUDY ON BIDENT-SHAPED SPATIAL SELF-LOCKED ENERGY ABSORBING SYSTEM

The self-locked energy absorbing system can avoid the lateral splashing of components under impact loading without external constraints, and hence has broad application prospects. However, for most of the existing self-locked energy absorbing systems, they can only maintain self-locking stability at specific directions, or the configuration is complexed and expensive to be manufactured, or the cross-sectional shape is irregular, leading to inconvenient for disassembly and assembly. These disadvantages greatly restrict the application and promotion of existing self-locked energy absorbing systems. To this end, a novel multidirectional self-locked energy absorbing system is proposed in this work. The system consists of thin-walled tubes with a bident-shaped cross-section, which is flexible and convenient to disassemble and to assemble. When the system proposed is subjected to impact loads, the tube grooves limit the displacement of the adjacent body tubes, achieve self-locking under impact loads in multiple spatial directions and, allow the system to be fully deformed and to absorb energy stably. Through finite element analysis, the systematically investigated is the effects of geometric parameters of a single bident tube and of the array profile size on the energy absorption characteristics of the system. Compared with the existing self-locked energy absorbing systems, it is also proved that the system proposed has superior energy absorption capacity.