Crushing characteristics and energy absorption behaviour of sloped-truncated origami tube

Thin-walled tubes with origami patterns show an expectable crushing mechanism, leading to a better energy absorption performance of lower initial peak force and smoother crushing process than conventional tube. In this study, a sloped-truncated origami tube (STOT), presenting variable stiffness in layers, was proposed. The crushing mode, crushing response and energy absorption performance of the STOT compared with those of tubes with parallel-truncated origami pattern (PTOT) and Miura-ori pattern (MOT) are experimentally investigated and validated through finite element method. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the effects of sloped-truncated ratio, number of layers and dihedral angle on the crushing process and energy absorption performance of the proposed STOT. Results show that the STOT with appropriate geometric parameters performed a desirable crushing process, characterized by without excessive initial peak force, followed by a smoothly increasing compression force. Comparison results show that the STOT is the best design for energy absorption device for its comparable value of specific energy absorption ( SEA ) and crushing force efficiency ( CFE ). The STOT, with optimized geometries achieves a 21.84 % increase in SEA and a 104.19 % improvement in CFE compared to the conventional square tube counterpart. Additionally, compared to its MOT counterpart, the proposed STOT exhibits superior performance in P m and SEA . This study offers new insights into the origami-inspired design and low-stiffness initiation of the crushing mode in patterned thin-walled tubes, achieving a balance between energy absorption and geometric parameters. • Sloped-truncated origami tube with variable stiffness across layers is proposed. • Crushing behaviour and energy absorption of the proposed tube are investigated. • Effects of sloped-truncated ratio, layer numbers and dihedral angle are studied. • A stable increasing crushing process with high energy absorption is obtained.