A novel design of thin-walled energy absorption structures with local surface nanocrystallization

Abstract A high-efficient energy absorption design in virtue of ultrasonic impact surface nanocrystallization treatment is proposed to enhance the crashworthiness of square thin-walled tubes. Due to significant improvement on mechanical characteristics within the treated areas, structural crashworthiness after surface nanocrystallization is significantly increased without the requirement of modifying configurations or mass. The results reveal that by optimizing local surface nanocrystallization layouts with a nanocrystallization area treatment ratio of approximately 50%, the specific energy absorption is enhanced by 64.29% as compared to the untreated tube. Experimental study validates that this technology is effective in the enhancement of the crashworthiness of square thin-walled tubes.