PSI - Issue 83

Kemal Arslan et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 83 (2026) 218–228

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experimental and numerical results are listed in Table 2. The difference between the experiments and simulation results is less than 1% for the peak force and 10% for the crushing displacement.

Experimental [Bogahawaththa et al. (2024)] Numerical

80

60

40

20

Contact Force (kN)

0

0

1

2

3

4

Displacement (mm)

Fig. 6. Validation of the numerical model through comparison with the experimental results from the literature.

Table 2. Comparison of the experimental [Bogahawaththa et al. (2024)] and numerical results. Experimental Numerical Difference Peak force (kN) 74.4 75.0 0.8% Crushing displacement (mm) 3.57 3.30 -7.6%

5. Results and Discussion Force-displacement data is an essential output for evaluating the energy absorption performance of structures. Based on the force-displacement curves, the following performance indicators are considered: Peak Crushing Force (PCF), Energy Absorption (EA), Specific Energy Absorption (SEA), Mean Crushing Force (MCF), and Crushing Force Efficiency (CFE). EA is the area under the force-displacement curve and can typically be calculated by numerical integration of the force-displacement data. In this study, EA is evaluated using the striker kinetic energy history provided by the software, which is obtained by subtracting the rebound energy from the initial impact energy. SEA indicates absorbed energy per unit mass ( m ). ܵ ൌ (3) MCF is the average force during crushing of structures and is the ratio of absorbed energy to total crushing displacement ( δ ). ܨܥܯ ൌ (4) CFE is the ratio of mean crushing force to peak crushing force. It represents the uniformity index of the force displacement curve and is typically expressed as a percentage.