Experimental study on crashworthiness in double crush tubes of polylactic acid material

The crush tube for crashworthiness is one of the automotive components crucial for absorbing impact energy when an accident occurs. It is necessary to pay attention to determining the crush tube material depending on the automotive components used. The research aims to analyze the ability to absorb energy in double tubes of Polylactic Acid material made on a 3D Printing machine to test the compression. The double crush tube combines a round outer tube and an inner tube which varies in shape: round, triangular, rectangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, hexagonal, and octagonal. The method is to create samples of crush tubes using a 3D printer machine and then conduct experimental compression testing to obtain a graph of the distribution load for each crush tube. The crashworthiness parameters used are absorption of specific energy (SEA), maximum collapse force (Fmax), and efficiency of crush force (CFE). The results obtained by the smallest total energy absorption (TEA) of 98.77 Joules were for a tube in a heptagonal shape. Meanwhile, the tube that absorbs the most energy is a round tube of 149,154 Joules.