Abaqus model for nested bell mouth tube energy absorber

This a Abaqus model for nested bell mouth tube energy absorber impact simulation. This FE model consists of four primary components: two bell-mouth tubes, a moving plate responsible for applying vertical force, and a fixed base. The bottom of the structure is positioned on a rigid base plate, while the thin-walled tube is subjected to compression by a moving plate. This plate is assigned a mass of 300 kg and an initial velocity of 15 m/s to accurately replicate the impact conditions. The energy-absorbing structures are discretized with 4-node S4R shell elements (reduced integration) for computational efficiency. Hourglass control ensures accurate plastic deformation modeling while suppressing zero-energy modes and volumetric locking. An explicit dynamic procedure is utilized, given its advantages in speed over implicit algorithms for this application. Additionally, contact formulations are included, specifically general surface contact, to prevent tube interpenetration during folding and surface-to-surface interaction is used to simulate the interfaces between the rigid plates and deforming tubes. It is noteworthy that energy absorption structures are assumed to be made of Armco iron. The basic mechanical properties are as listed below: density ρ = 7890 kg/m3, Young’s modulus E =207 GPa, and Poisson’s ratio ν = 0.29. Besides, to capture the plastic behavior, a nonlinear kinematic hardening criterion was employed.
This Python code must be executed in Abaqus environment to generate the model.
Also, the data used for optimization of the proposed topology is provided here as an Excel file.