Analytical and experimental investigation into the crushing behavior of hat shaped composite energy absorber

The aim of this study is to investigate analytical and experimental energy absorbing capacity for a hat shape structure with three different boundary conditions. Four layered unidirectional (UD) E-glass fiber /polyester resin was used to construct hat shape beam energy absorber. The length of the composite hat shape was 1m and the thickness was 3mm. Result shows good coloration between experimental energy absorption and the values obtained from the model. The best coloration between experimental and the model is related to [75,0,0,-75] fiber stacking configuration with 0.23% accuracy in clamp-free boundary condition, and the worst coloration between experimental and the model is related to [30,60,-30,-60] fiber stacking configuration with 19.88% accuracy in clamp-free boundary condition.