Recently, multi-cell structures have received increased attention for crashworthiness applications due to their superior energy absorption capability. However, such structures were featured with high peak collapsing force (PCL) forming a serious safety concern, and this limited their application for vehicle structures. Accordingly, this paper proposes windowed shaped cuttings as a mechanism to reduce the high PCL of the multi-cell hexagonal tubes and systemically investigates the axial crushing of different windowed multi-cell tubes and also seeks for their optimal crashworthiness design. Three different multi-cell configurations were constructed using wall-to-wall (WTW) and corner-to-corner (CTC) connection webs. Validated finite element models were generated using explicit finite element code, LS-DYNA, and were used to run crush simulations on the studied structures. The crashworthiness responses of the multi-cell standard tubes (STs), i.e., without windows, and multi-cell windowed tubes (WTs) were determined and compared. The WTW connection type was found to be more effective for STs and less favorable for WTs. Design of experiments (DoE), response surface methodology (RSM), and multiple objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) tools were employed to find the optimal designs of the different STs and WTs. Furthermore, parametric analysis was conducted to uncover the effects of key geometrical parameters on the main crashworthiness responses of all studied structures. The windowed cuttings were found to be able to slightly reduce the PCL of the multi-cell tubes, but this reduction was associated with a major negative implication on their energy absorption capability. This work provides useful insights on designing effective multi-cell structures suitable for vehicle crashworthiness applications.

近来，由于其优异的能量吸收能力，多电池结构在耐撞性应用中受到越来越多的关注。然而，这种结构的特征在于具有高的峰值塌落力（PCL），这构成了严重的安全隐患，并且这限制了它们在车辆结构中的应用。因此，本文提出了窗形切屑作为减少多孔六角形管的高PCL的机制，并系统地研究了不同的多窗六角形管的轴向挤压，并寻求其最佳的耐撞性设计。使用墙对墙（WTW）和角对角（CTC）连接网构造了三种不同的多单元配置。使用显式有限元代码LS-DYNA生成经过验证的有限元模型，并用于对研究的结构进行挤压模拟。确定并比较了多室标准管（ST）（即无窗）和多室窗口管（WTs）的耐撞性响应。发现WTW连接类型对于ST更为有效，而对于WT则较不利。实验设计（DoE），响应面方法（RSM）和多目标粒子群优化（MOPSO）工具用于查找不同ST和WT的最佳设计。此外，进行了参数分析，以揭示关键几何参数对所有研究结构的主要耐撞性响应的影响。发现开窗的钻屑能够稍微降低多孔管的PCL，但是这种减少与它们的能量吸收能力产生了重大的负面影响。这项工作为设计适用于车辆防撞性应用的有效多单元结构提供了有用的见识。