Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159

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Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Crashworthiness of bionic fractal hierarchical structures

Yong Zhang a,⁎, Jin Wang a, Chunhui Wang b, Yi Zeng a, Tengteng Chen a
a
College of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Huaqiao University, Xiamen, China
b
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

• Thin-walled structures with hierarchical

and fractal cross section present great
potential to improve energy absorption.
• The high order fractal designs outper-
form the corresponding simple hierar-
chical designs with the same mass.
• Fractal configurations and geometry
have remarkable influence on the en-
ergy absorption of fractal structure.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents a fractal hierarchical hexagon structure inspired by bionic structures, such as spider webs, as
Received 6 March 2018 a novel lightweight energy absorber. Experimental testing and computational modeling are carried out to char-
Received in revised form 13 August 2018 acterize the effects of fractal order and geometrical shapes on the crashworthiness of this new structure com-
Accepted 14 August 2018
pared to a simple hierarchical structure. The computational results reveal that both simple hierarchical and
Available online 16 August 2018
fractal structures can present significant improvement in energy absorption over single wall nonhierarchical
Keywords:
structure. Furthermore, fractal configuration, geometrical parameters and order have important effect on the en-
Crashworthiness ergy absorption efficiency of fractal hierarchical structures, with the 2nd order design being the optimal for a
Fractal hierarchical structure given mass. The findings of this research offer a new route for designing novel lightweight energy absorbers
Energy absorption with improved crash protection against impact.
Lightweight © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the minimum weight. A broad range of new designs of thin-walled

The drive towards electrical vehicles calls greater innovation in
lightweight energy absorbing structures to provide crash protection at
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhangyong@hqu.edu.cn (Y. Zhang).
structures with different geometrical cross-sections has been proposed
to absorb more energy than single-walled structures. Among them, the
multi-cell column structures have been found to absorb more energy
than the equivalent single walled structure of the same mass. Tran
et al. [1] developed theoretical models for three types of multi-cell trian-
gular tubes based on super folding element theory, and the feasibility of

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2018.08.028
0264-1275/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
148 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159
the theoretical models was validated by numerical simulations.
Mahmoodi et al. [2] theoretically and numerically investigated the
energy absorption behavior of tapered multi-cell tubes and found
that the increase of the taper angle and the wall thickness could im-
prove the crashworthiness of the structures. Zhang et al. [3] per-
formed quasi-static axial compression tests on multi-cell columns
with different sections and found that multi-cell columns offered
better crushing characteristics than single cell columns. Nia and
Parsapour [4] compared the energy absorption capacities of simple
and multi-cell thin-walled tubes with triangular, square, hexagonal
and octagonal sections. The results showed that the energy absorp-
tion capacity of multi-cell sections was greater than that of simple
sections. Xiang et al. [5] compared the energy absorption capacities
of polygonal tubes, multi-cell tubes and honeycombs. Their results
suggested that the energy absorption of multi-cell tubes depended
on the number of cells. Fang et al. [6] studied the crushing behaviors
of multi-cell members subjected to oblique impact loads. The results
showed that the increase in cell number was beneficial to the energy
absorption. In addition, Wu et al. [7] performed the multi-objective
optimal design for a five-cell tube to maximize its specific energy ab-
sorption and minimize peak crushing force. Yang et al. [8] optimized
the multi-cell tubular structures with pre-folded origami patterns.
These results showed that quintuple-cell origami tubes absorbed
the highest amount of energy with significantly reduced initial
peak force.
Recently, biological structures with hierarchical (Fig. 1(a) [9],
(b) [10]) and fractal (Fig. 1(c) [11]) characteristics have attracted
growing attention to enhance the mechanical properties of light-
weight materials and structures. Kooistra et al. [12] investigated
the transverse compression mechanisms of hierarchical corru-
gated core sandwich panels, and found that second order trusses
had higher compressive and shear collapse strengths than their
equivalent mass first order counterparts. Fan et al. [13] demon-
strated the effectiveness of hierarchical honeycomb structure in
improving the stiffness and plastic collapse strength of thin-
walled structures. Zheng et al. [14] found that hierarchical square
honeycombs using ductile woven textile composites had higher
specific energy absorption than those of metallic honeycombs.
Chen et al. [15] studied the hexagonal, kagome, and triangular hi-
erarchical honeycomb metamaterials and found that hierarchical
designs could effectively improve the heat resistance and load-
carrying capacity of regular honeycomb structures. Zhang et al.
[16] found that hierarchical honeycombs more efficiently distrib-
uted the material across the network than traditional hexagonal
honeycombs. Oftadeh et al. [17] constructed a fractal-appearing
Fig. 1. Typical hierarchical biological structures: (a) bird-of-paradise [9], (b) spongy bone [10] and fractal biological structures: (c) nautilus [11].
cellular metamaterial by replacing each three-edge vertex of a
base hexagonal network with a smaller hexagon. Their results
showed that the in-plane stiffness for a mass increases with the
order of hierarchy.
In addition, hierarchical designs can also improve the weight-
efficiency of thin-walled tubular structures. Sun et al. [18] found
that hierarchical triangular lattice structures possessed three to
four times higher mean crushing force than single-cell and multi-
cell lattice structures. Li et al. [19] investigated the crushing mecha-
nisms of hierarchical hexagonal tubes by numerical analysis and
found that hierarchical topology greatly improved the energy ab-
sorption of thin-walled hexagonal tubes. Luo et al. [20] examined
the lateral crushing behaviors of hierarchical quadrangular tubes and
found it greatly increased the mean crushing force of single wall qua-
drangular tubes. Wang et al. [21] developed a hybrid hierarchical struc-
ture based on the Koch fractal principles, and found that the 2nd order
hybrid Koch absorbers outperformed a wide range of multi-cell struc-
tures of the same mass.
Motivated by these promising findings, in this paper we pro-
pose a novel thin-walled structure inspired by the spiral wheel-
shaped (orb-web) construction of spider webs. This design, de-
noted fractal hierarchical hexagon structure, is compared with a
simple hierarchical hexagon structure. Section 2 describes these
two biologically inspired designs, numerical models of simple hier-
archical and fractal hierarchical structures, and validation of the
computational models by experiments. A comparative study is pre-
sented in Section 3 to investigate the advantage of the fractal hier-
archical design over the simple, non-fractal hierarchical design.
Lastly, using the validated numerical model, sensitivity and para-
metric design are performed by varying the fractal order and
geometries.
2. Model and experiment
2.1. Geometric models
The geometric characteristics of bioinspired hierarchical and fractal
hierarchical thin-walled structures are illustrated in Fig. 2, where
Fig. 2(a) and Fig. 2(b) show the simple hierarchical construction of spi-
ral spider web and the evolution fractal hierarchical design, respec-
tively. Firstly, hexagon bionic hierarchical sections are established
based on the biological geometry of spider web, in which high order hi-
erarchical structures (HS) are formed by adding a regular hexagon at
the center of the low order hierarchical structures and connecting the
corresponding vertices; the length of the linking elements is denoted
 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159 149

Fig. 2. The evolution of bionic structures: (a) biological geometry of spider web, (b) cross-sections of hierarchical and fractal structures, (c) typical vehicle anti-collision structure [22], and
(d) frontal impact absorbers of the vehicle.

as d1 and the wall thickness of the hexagonal structure is t. The diameter

of the circumscribed circle of the bionic structure is denoted as D. The
three hierarchical structures with different orders are named HS1, HS2
and HS3, respectively.
Next, a new fractal structure (FS) is obtained by replacing the
each of primary hexagonal vertices of the simple hierarchical struc-
tures with sub-hexagons and resultant fractal designs are named as
FS1 , FS2 and FS3 , respectively. The side length of sub-hexagon and
linking distance are denoted as b and d2, respectively, as shown in
Fig. 2(b). The wall thickness of fractal structures is also denoted
as t.
Based on a typical energy absorber of passenger vehicle, as shown
in Fig. 2(d) [22], a schematic diagram of the bionic thin-walled tubes
under axial dynamic loading is presented in Fig. 2(c). In the following
numerical investigations, the circumscribed circle diameter D of bi-
onic structures is kept at 90 mm, the length L of the columns is
160 mm, and the wall thickness t will be varied. The columns will
be axially loaded by an impactor with a mass of 500 kg at a velocity
of v = 10 m/s. The non-impacted end of tube is constrained by a
rigid wall.

2.2. Numerical models and crashworthiness indicators

Finite element (FE) models were developed for the bionic thin-
walled structures, both simple hierarchical and fractal hierarchical
structures, as illustrated in Fig. 3, using the nonlinear finite element soft-
ware LS-DYNA 971. The thin-walled tubes were modeled using
Belytschko-Tsay four-node shell elements [23]. To maintain a reason-
able balance between the computational cost and accuracy of the Fig. 3. The finite element models of thin-walled structures.
150 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159
Fig. 4. True stress-strain curve of A6061-O.
numerical results, the element size of 1.0 mm × 1.0 mm was found to be
sufficient for to achieve convergence using shell elements. The elastic-
plastic material model MAT_24 and rigidity material model MAT_20 in
LS-DYNA were adopted to model the thin-walled tube and the rigid
clamps, respectively. An automatic surface-to-surface contact was
Fig. 5. Experimental specimens: (a) 3D view of specimens, (b) top view of specimens, (c) universal testing machine.
chosen to simulate the contact between the thin walled tube and rigid
clamps. An automatic single-surface contact was adopted for all the
thin walls to avoid mutual interpenetration of folding lobes. The static
and dynamic frictional coefficients defined in these contacts were 0.3
and 0.2, respectively [24].
To effectively evaluate the crashworthiness performance of thin-
walled structures, several crashworthiness indicators are defined
here. They are total energy absorption (EA), specific energy absorp-
tion (SEA), peak crushing force (PCF), and crash load efficiency
(CLE), respectively.
The total energy absorption (EA) [25] during the process of com-
pression is calculated as
Z d
EA ¼ F ðxÞ dx ð1Þ
0
where F(x) denotes the crushing force, x is the instantaneous crushing
displacement, and d is the effective crushing displacement. Herein, the
value of d is kept at 110 mm.
The specific energy absorption (SEA) [26] denotes the energy
absorbed by a structure of unit mass. It is defined by:
EA
SEA ¼ ð2Þ
M
where M is the total mass of the structure. SEA is a key indicator to esti-
mate the energy absorption efficiency of structures with different mate-
rials and weights. Therefore, the higher the SEA, the better is the energy
absorption performance of the structure.
The peak crushing force PCF [27], i.e., the maximum of F(x), is an-
other important crashworthiness indicator for energy absorbers. Since
 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159 151

a high PCF often leads to a high deceleration, potentially causing severe
injury or even death of occupant, PCF should be reduced or constrained
to certain extent from the safety design viewpoint.
The mean crushing force (MCF) [27] represents the average crushing
strength, and is expressed as
Obviously, the higher the CLE value, the better is the force uniformity
for an energy absorber.
2.3. Experimental tests and validation of FE model

EAðdÞ Quasi-static crushing tests were carried out to characterize the en-
MCF ¼ ð3Þ
d ergy absorption behavior of bionic structures. The data also served to
validate the finite element models. The material of the bionic structures
where EA(d) is the total energy absorbed when the absorbed is crushed is aluminum alloy A6061-O, with the following mechanical properties:
over a distance d. density ρ = 2700 kg/m3, Young's modulus E = 68.2 GPa, and Poisson's
Finally, the crushing load efficiency (CLE) [28] indicates the con- ratio μ = 0.3. The stress-strain response of the aluminum alloy was mea-
stancy of the crushing force during impact, and it is defined as the sured using the MTS 322 material testing machine at a displacement
ratio between the mean load (MCF) and the initial peak force (PCF), rate of 5 mm/min. The true stress-strain data of A6061-O was presented
in Fig. 4. This aluminum was known to be insensitive to the strain rate in
MCF the range of interest [29], so no further tests were carried out at higher
CLE ¼ ð4Þ
PCF strain rates.

Fig. 6. Comparison of the deformation modes between the experimental and numerical results: (a) HS2, (b) FS2.
152 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159

Fig. 7. The internal views between the experimental and numerical results: (a) HS2, (b) FS2.

To validate the computational model outlined in Section 2.2, two
specimens, denoted as HS 2 and FS2 as shown in Fig. 5(a), were
manufactured by the wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM)
technique from blocks of aluminum alloy 6061-O. This WEDM tech-
nique used a continuous moving electrode wire to generate pulse
spark discharge to etch away the material. The top views of the
two specimens were shown in Fig. 5(b). The circumscribed circle di-
ameters of HS2 and FS2 were 70 mm and 90 mm, respectively. The
lengths of HS 2 and FS 2 were 110 mm and 160 mm, respectively.
Meanwhile, the length of sub-hexagon b and link distances of d 1
and d 2 were 5 mm, 15 mm and 5 mm, respectively, and the wall
thickness t of HS 2 and FS 2 was 0.8 mm. Quasi-static compressive
tests were performed in an MTS universal testing machine shown
in Fig. 5(c). The specimens were placed between two flat plates.
During the test, the top plate (pressure head) of the machine
moved downward at a constant speed of 5 mm/min. The crushing
load and displacement were collected automatically. When the
compressive displacements reached 70 mm for HS 2 and 110 mm
for FS2, respectively, the tests were terminated and the specimens
were unloaded for examination.

Fig. 8. Comparison of impacting force-displacement curves: (a) HS2 (b) FS2.

 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159 153

Table 1
The thicknesses of thin-walled structures with different mass.

Cross section M1 t M2 t M3 t M4 t
(kg) (mm) (kg) (mm) (kg) (mm) (kg) (mm)

HS1 0.13 1.16 0.17 1.44 0.20 1.73 0.24 2.02

HS2 0.13 0.58 0.17 0.72 0.20 0.87 0.24 1.01

HS3 0.13 0.43 0.17 0.54 0.20 0.65 0.24 0.76

FS1 0.13 0.80 0.17 1.00 0.20 1.20 0.24 1.40

FS2 0.13 0.43 0.17 0.54 0.20 0.65 0.24 0.76

FS3 0.13 0.33 0.17 0.41 0.20 0.49 0.24 0.57

Fig. 6 shows the collapse modes of the specimens tested to-
gether with the predictions of the corresponding FE models at dif-
ferent crushing displacements. It is clear from Fig. 6(b) that FS 2
undergoes a regular stable collapse in every corner, which is the
desired energy absorption mode. During the crushing process, its
axial crushing progressed from the bottom end, with regular folds
stacking onto the previous folds. By contrast, the deformation of
HS 2 starts from the top end, and the folding is much less uniform
than the FS2.
Comparisons between the experimental results and the compu-
tational model predictions shown in Fig. 6 confirm that the FE
models have well captured the deformation characteristics at dif-
ferent crushing displacements. To further examine the crushing de-
formation in detail, the tested specimens are cut into two equal
halves, so the interior of the progressive collapse modes are visible,
as presented in Fig. 7. The sub-hexagons of FS 2 form very regular
and uniform folds, and the wavelength of the folds is quite short.
By contrast, the collapse wavelength of HS2 is larger than the FS2 ,
which suggests that the sub-hexagons promote the progressive
folding. Meantime, the interior views of both specimens are very
similar to the predictions of the FE models. In addition, Fig. 8
shows the corresponding crushing force-displacement curves of
HS 2 and FS 2 , indicating a periodic fluctuation at regular intervals
as collapse progresses. This result provides further evidence that
the thin-walled structures underwent stable and progressive defor-
mation. The load-displacement curves obtained from the computa-
tional simulation are in good agreement with the experiment
results. Therefore, the FE models have now been validated and can
be applied to investigate the crashworthiness of new designs,
which are described in the following section.

Table 2
SEA and PCF of all structures.

Cross section M1 (kg) M2 (kg) M3 (kg) M4 (kg)

SEA PCF SEA PCF SEA PCF SEA PCF

(kJ/kg) (kN) (kJ/kg) (kN) (kJ/kg) (kN) (kJ/kg) (kN)

HS1 11.19 41.76 12.91 53.63 14.20 65.32 15.72 76.93

HS2 11.76 36.46 13.72 47.70 15.29 59.96 17.02 72.34

HS3 11.98 35.22 14.02 45.27 15.63 56.02 17.21 67.72

FS1 19.58 41.22 22.32 54.27 24.30 66.26 25.14 78.59

FS2 22.29 36.24 24.08 46.39 26.43 57.36 27.64 69.75

FS3 23.51 35.47 25.14 46.84 27.52 58.40 28.91 70.58

154 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159
Fig. 9. SEA of different simple hierarchical and fractal hierarchical structures.
3. Comparative analysis for simple hierarchical and fractal hierar-
chical structures
To assess the effects of the order of hierarchy and fractal state on
the crashworthiness of the simple hierarchical structures (HS1, HS2,
HS3) and fractal hierarchical structures (FS1, FS2, FS3) presented in
Fig. 1, computational simulations are carried out of these structures
with four different mass (and hence different wall thickness). The
mass of these two types of thin-walled structures determines
the material distribution, which then affects the energy absorption.
The corresponding wall thickness to attain the desired mass is also
listed in Table 1.
Table 2 presents the crashworthiness indicators of the different
structures examined. The results show that for all the cross-
section shapes, both the SEA and PCF increase with the mass, as
clearly seen in Fig. 9 for the SEA curves of different structures.
Fig. 10. Impacting force-displacement of different hierarchical structures: (a) HS structures, (b) FS structures.
More importantly, for the simple hierarchical structures, the SEA is
near linear increase with the mass. Furthermore, the 3rd order de-
sign (HS3) seems to yield a close SEA value to the 2 nd order design
(HS2), implying that there is a diminishing improvement in specific
energy absorption beyond the 2nd order. However, for the fractal hi-
erarchical structures, the 3 rd order design (FS3) seems to still offer
substantial improvement over the 2nd order design (FS2), although
the gain is less than that of 2nd order design over the 1st order
design.
The crushing force-displacement curves of HS and FS structures
with mass = 0.202 kg are presented in Fig. 10. The fluctuation of
crushing force is more pronounced in low level hierarchical struc-
tures, such as HS 1 and FS1, as indicated by the large folding wave-
length. This behavior is undesirable for energy absorbers. As the
hierarchical level increases, however, the fluctuation in the force-
displacement curve decreases, indicating that higher level hierar-
chical structures are better in terms of crush force efficiency. The
corresponding deformation shapes are presented in Fig. 11. It is
seen that as the hierarchical level increases, both HS and FS struc-
tures display more progressive folding lobes, and the folding wave-
length decreases with the hierarchy order and the fractal order,
i.e., λ HS 1 N λ HS 2 N λ HS 3 and λ FS 1 N λ FS 2 N λ FS 3 . These results reveal
that the hierarchical principle improves energy absorption. How-
ever, the force-displacement curves of the 2nd order (HS 2 , FS 2 )
and 3 rd order structures (HS 3 , FS 3 ) are fairly similar, indicating
that they have near load bearing capacity and energy absorption.
This is consistent with the similarity between the folding wave-
lengths of the 2 nd order and the 3rd order structures. Therefore, it
be concluded that hierarchical organization improves crashworthi-
ness of thin-walled structures, with the 2 nd order hierarchical
structures being the optimum considering the gain versus geomet-
rical complexity.
It is important to note that FS structures offer a dramatic en-
hancement in SEA compared to the HS counterparts, as seen in
Fig. 9. The percentages of increase in SEA for different mass are pre-
sented in Table 3, indicating the amount of increase ranging be-
tween 59.92% and 96.24%. Therefore, the fractal geometry offers
huge potential in improving the energy absorption capability of
thin-walled structures.
To further illustrate the improvement offered by the fractal de-
sign over the simple hierarchical counterpart, Fig. 12 presents the
 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159 155

Fig. 11. Deformations and section views of different structures: (a) HS structures, (b) FS structures.

force-displacement curves for FS and HS structures with the same
mass of 0.20kg. It is clear that at the same hierarchical order, a fractal
structure offers much higher load bearing capacity and more energy
absorption than the corresponding simple hierarchical structure.
Furthermore, the 2nd and 3rd order fractal hierarchical structures
show more progressive folding lobes than the corresponding simple
hierarchical structures. From the deformation shapes shown in
Fig. 12, strain concentration occurs mainly at the corners of struc-
tures. In the case of fractal structures, the strain also concentrates
at the corners of sub-hexagon structures thus the sub-hexagons trig-
ger more progressive deformations, contributing to better energy
absorption performance of the fractal structures.
The PCF values listed in Table 2 also confirm that an increase in mass
causes the PCF to increase. The reason is that higher mass means thicker
walls, increasing the stiffness of the thin-walled structures. The values
of CLE for different structures are plotted in Fig. 13. It is clear that the
CLE values for both structures increase with the hierarchical order.
More importantly, the CLE values of fractal structures are much greater
than that of corresponding simple hierarchical structures, indicating
that fractal organization improves crush force uniformity, which is de-
sirable for energy absorbers.
Overall, the 2nd fractal hierarchical structures (FS2) has higher en-
ergy absorption than other structures examined in this paper. Therefore,
FS2 is chosen as a candidate in following parametric design.

4. Parametric design of FS2

The crashworthiness behavior of the FS2 highly depends on the

Table 3 geometric and fractal parameters. Therefore, a parametric design is nec-
Increasing rate of SEA for FS structures and corresponding HS structures.
essary to explore the influence on crashworthiness under dynamic
ΔSEA (FS1 vs HS1)a ΔSEA (FS2 vs HS2)a ΔSEA (FS3 vs HS3)a loading.
M1 = 0.13 kg 74.98% 89.54% 96.24%
M2 = 0.17 kg 72.88% 75.51% 79.32% 4.1. The effect of fractal configuration
M3 = 0.20 kg 71.12% 72.86% 76.07%
M4 = 0.24 kg 59.92% 62.39% 67.94% The location of the sub-hexagons, i.e., the fractal configuration, may
a
ΔSEA ¼ ðSEAFSSEA
−SEAHS Þ
HS
 100%: influence the energy absorption characteristics of the fractal structures.
156 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159

Fig. 12. Force-displacement curves and deformation modes of hierarchical and fractal structures: (a) 1st structures, (b) 2nd structures, (c) 3rd structures.

Fig. 14 presents three fractal configurations of sub-hexagon in vertex of fractal designs listed in Table 4. Dynamic impacting simulations of the
2nd order FS, which are referred as inner sub-hexagon, central sub- nine fractal structures are performed to investigate their crushing be-
hexagon, and outer sub-hexagon, respectively. Applying these three haviors and to identify the optimum candidate for further detailed anal-
configurations to the three hierarchical geometries gives nine types of ysis. The side length b of sub-hexagon and the linking distance d2 shown
 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159
Fig. 13. CLE of all structures with different mass.
Fig. 14. Different fractal configurations for FS2.
in Fig. 2(b) are set as 5 mm for all nine variants, and total mass is kept
constant.
The results of SEA, PCF and CLE of the nine fractal structures are sum-
marized in Table 5. It can be seen that the fractal configuration has an im-
portant effect on the energy absorption, with the HIHC design having the
highest SEA, more than 33.2% than the HOHI design that yields the mini-
mum energy absorption. The HIHC design features inner sub-hexagons in
the first layer and central sub-hexagons in the second layer. This particu-
lar design produces both the maximum SEA (29.21 kJ/kg) and the maxi-
mum CLE, while the PCF is close to other configurations. Therefore,
Table 4
Fractal structures with different fractal configurations.
Fractal type Cross section Name Fractal type
HOHI
HOHC
HOHO
157
HIHC is the optimal fractal configuration among the nine options, and
thus will be further evaluated in following to quantify the effects of
other geometrical parameters, such as the thickness of the cell wall.
4.2. The effect of geometrical parameters
Based on the finding presented in Section 4.1 that the fractal struc-
tures HIHC is the best design for crashworthiness, further parametric
analysis is performed to characterize the effects of the cell walls on
crashworthiness of HIHC, such as the side length b of sub-hexagon,
the linking distance d2 shown in Fig. 2(b). To avoid geometric interfer-
ence, the range of parameter b and d are set as 4 mm–7 mm.
Fig. 15(a) depicts the 3D surface of SEA of HIHC with different geo-
metrical parameters (b and d2). It is clear that increasing the value of
d2 only yields a slight increase in SEA, indicating that SEA is not sensitive
to the linking distance d2. However, the side length b of the sub-
hexagons shows a strong effect on SEA: increasing b causes SEA to rise
first and then fall, reaching the maximum value at b = 6 mm. This is fur-
ther illustrated in Fig. 16. At a given crushing displacement, the force is
highest at b = 6 mm.
In addition, PCF values shown in Fig. 15(b) also display a similar phe-
nomenon with SEA. It is seen that PCF is not sensitive for d2, however,
PCF gradually increases with the b increasing. Therefore, it can be be-
lieved that geometrical parameter b plays an important role in the
crashworthiness of HIHC.
5. Conclusions
This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of the crashwor-
thiness of simple hierarchical and fractal hierarchical structures using
experimental tests and computational modeling techniques. Several
conclusions are drawn from the results:
1. Bionic designs of simple hierarchical and fractal hierarchical configu-
rations offer significant improvement in energy absorption capabili-
ties over the hexagonal structure (HS1).
2. The energy absorption of the fractal hierarchical design is better than
the simple hierarchical design, the 2nd order fractal hierarchical
structure (FS2) has the optimum crashworthiness considering the
gain versus geometrical complexity.
3. Both fractal configuration and geometry have important effect on the
energy absorption of the 2nd order fractal structure, in which the
length of sub-hexagon has strong sensitivity on the energy absorption.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation
of China (51675190), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Fu-
jian Province University, Fujian Provincial Natural Science Foundation of
China (2015J01204), Promotion Program for Young and Middle-aged
Teacher in Science and Technology Research of Huaqiao University
(ZQN-PY202).
Cross section Name Fractal type Cross section Name
HCHI HIHI
HCHC HIHC
HCHO HIHO
158 Y. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 158 (2018) 147–159

Table 5
SEA, PCF and CLE of different fractal structures.

Cross section Deformation SEA PCF CLE Cross section Deformation SEA PCF CLE
(kJ/kg) (kN) (kJ/kg) (kN)

27.84 74.42 0.85 21.94 70.42 0.70

27.2 73.63 0.84 29.21 75.04 0.88

23.77 73.99 0.73 27.43 75.77 0.82

24.71 70.37 0.79 24.03 75.16 0.72

23.87 70.16 0.77

Fig. 15. SEA and PCF of HIHC with different geometrical parameters: (a) SEA, (b) PCF.

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