Influence of Element Formulation on the Axial Crushing of Thin-walled Dual-phase Steel Square Sections

This paper presents a systematic numerical investigation of the influence of element formulation on the force- deformation characteristics and crush behaviour of thin-walled dual-phase steel square tubes subjected to axial loading. Influence of shell and volume elements were verified on the crush behaviour. Finite element models square sections were created and analysed using the non-linear explicit finite element code LS-DYNA®. Parameters of interest were the energy absorption, peak crush load capacity, and the crush behaviour. The strain-rate effect has been considered for the dynamic simulations. Even though the initial peak load from numerical analyses differs significantly from the tests, the mean force does not deviate greatly whatever may be the element formulation. Both shell and brick elements predicted the experimental responses reasonably well. However, the element aspect ratio in volume element simulations seems to play a role in accurately capturing the local bending response when subjected to axial compressive load.