Numerical Study of AV/CFRP Bio Inspired Hybrid Multi-Cell Energy Absorber: Comparison between different CFRP lay-ups

As the automotive industry continues to expand rapidly, ensuring vehicle crash safety has become a critical engineering priority. Energy-absorbing structures (used as sacrificial components) dissipate impact energy and limit loads transmitted to occupants; their performance depends on geometry and material. Sustainability imperatives have accelerated the shift to lightweight solutions, notably advanced composites, while bio-inspired geometries increasingly outperform conventional designs in absorption efficiency and deformation stability. Among lightweight absorbers, hybrid aluminum/CFRP crash boxes marry the stable progressive folding of metals with the high specific strength of composites. Their effectiveness, however, is highly sensitive to laminate design especially CFRP ply orientation. This study numerically examines a bio-inspired, sea-glass-sponge multi-cell hybrid Al/CFRP tube under quasi-static axial compression in LS-DYNA. Six four-ply laminates of equal thickness and mass [۰], [۱۵], [۴۵], [۹۰], [۰/۹۰], [۹۰/۰] are compared. Force-displacement responses and failure morphologies show that ply orientation controls both initial peak load and plateau stability, underscoring its central role in optimizing the crash performance of hybrid energy-absorbing structures. Among all configurations, cross-plies ([۰/۹۰] and [۹۰/۰]) exhibited the most balanced and stable behavior, achieving the highest energy absorption and efficiency.

Keywords:

Crashworthiness , Hybrid , Bioinspired , Al/CFRP , Ply orientation