Research Article
Optimization of Crashworthiness Parameters of Thin-Walled
Conoidal Structures
K. Vinayagar,
1
P. Ganeshan,
2
P. Nelson Raja,
1
M. S. Zakir Hussain,
3
P. Vengala Kumar,
4
P. Ramshankar,
5
V. Mohanavel,
6,7,8
N. Mathankumar,
9
K. Raja,
10
and Tesfaye Tefera Bezabih
11
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Fatima Michael College of Engineering & Technology, Madurai, India
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sri Eshwar College of Engineering, Coimbatore 641202, Tamil Nadu, India
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, AAA College of Engineering & Technology, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, India
4
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University VOC College of Engineering, oothukudi, Tamil Nadu, India
5
Department of Civil Engineering, University College of Engineering Dindigul, Dindigul 624622, Tamil Nadu, India
6
Centre for Materials Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research,
Chennai 600073, Tamil Nadu, India
7
Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Technology, Glocal University, Delhi-Yamunotri Marg, Saharanpur,
Uttar Pradesh 247121, India
8
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chandigarh University, Mohali 140413, Punjab, India
9
Department of Mechanical Engineering, NPR College of Engineering and Technology, Natham, Dindigul 624401,
Tamil Nadu, India
10
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College of Engineering Dindigul, Dindigul 624622, Tamil Nadu, India
11
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ambo University, Ambo, Ethiopia
Correspondence should be addressed to Tesfaye Tefera Bezabih; tesfaye.tefera@ambou.edu.et
Received 15 July 2022; Revised 22 August 2022; Accepted 5 September 2022; Published 12 October 2022
Academic Editor: Pudhupalayam Muthukutti Gopal
Copyright © 2022 K. Vinayagar et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
is paper aims to identify the optimum level of factors or parameters that affect the energy absorption of conoidal structures by
grey relational examination. To optimize crashworthiness parameters of conical structures, the L9 orthogonal array has been
adopted to design the experiments. e tailor-made thin-walled conical structures were fabricated by three most important
factors, such as base diameter, height, and thickness, as design variables, and they were subjected to axial compression in a quasi-
static method. e important responses of crashworthiness indicators such as the mean crushing force and specific energy
absorption (SEA) were calculated with the help of a load-displacement curve. Experimental results showed that the crushing
behaviours of conical structures were fairly significant. Grey relational analysis (GRA) and analysis of variance are used toobtain
the optimal levels of parameters. From the results, the optimum levels of parameters are found to be a base diameter of 180 mm, a
height of 120 mm, and a thickness of 1.5 mm.
1. Introduction
Energy absorbers with lightweight are widely used to de-
velop the crashworthiness of vehicles at the time of colli-
sions. e thin-walled formations or structure are normally
used as energy absorbers in all types of transport systems
owing to their properties like very less weight and the ca-
pacity to absorb more impact energy. By determining the
mean crushing power, the energy lost until the substance or
material was compressed-honeycomb structures' ability to
absorb energy is assessed. Several studies have been carried
out to develop theoretical models to forecast the mean or
average crushing force for thin-walled structures. Significant
analysis has been carried out by the authors in [1] intended
for out-of-plane axial crushing confrontation of hexagonal
honeycomb. e wall thickness and diameter of hexagonal
Hindawi
Advances in Materials Science and Engineering
Volume 2022, Article ID 4475605, 6 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/4475605