Appl Compos Mater (2008) 15:273285 DOI 10.

1007/s10443-008-9074-2

Predicting the Crushing Behavior of Axially Loaded Elliptical Composite Tubes Using Artificial Neural Networks
Hany El Kadi

Received: 11 September 2008 / Accepted: 30 October 2008 / Published online: 13 November 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract In this research work, the artificial neural networks (ANN) technique is used in predicting the crushing behavior and energy absorption characteristics of axially-loaded glass fiber/epoxy composite elliptical tubes. Predictions are compared to actual experimental results obtained from the literature and are shown to be in good agreement. Effects of parameters such as network architecture, number of hidden layers and number of neurons per hidden layer are also considered. The study shows that ANN techniques can effectively be used to predict the crushing response and the energy absorption characteristics of elliptical composite tubes with various ellipticity ratios subjected to axial loading. Keywords Composite tubes . Artificial neural networks . Crushing behavior . Ellipticity ratio

1 Introduction Impact energy absorbers are used to protect automobile passengers and pedestrians from the effects of sudden impact caused by collisions. This is accomplished by converting the impact energy into many different types of deformation energy keeping the peak force exerted on the individual below the level causing damage [1, 2]. The absorbers must also provide a long deformation path to slow the deceleration of the protected person. These impact energy absorbers will mostly rely on a crushable energy absorber to cushion the passenger compartment during impact. The use of advanced materials in the design of energy absorber devices has been hindered by a lack of experimental and numerical simulation work that would guide designers to the optimum energy absorber device. Extensive utilization of advanced composites in energy absorber design will mainly depend on finding accurate techniques to predict their response to different loading conditions. To that goal, many studies have lately investigated the quasi-static crushing behavior of composite tubes both experimentally and

H. El Kadi (*) Mechanical Engineering Department, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates e-mail: hkadi@aus.edu

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numerically using finite elements analysis [112]. In these cases, the load was either applied to the tube in a transverse or in an axial direction. In these studies, both the loadcarrying capacity and the energy-absorption capability of composite tubes were investigated. The behavior of axially-loaded elliptic composite tubes under compression loading has recently been investigated both experimentally and numerically [11]. In this study, the effect of the ellipticity ratio (a/b; a=inner major radius, b=inner minor radius) on the loadcarrying capacity of the tubes as well as the energy absorption until failure were also investigated. Finite elements analysis was used for the numerical investigation of elliptic tubes with ellipticity ratios varying from 1 to 2 (1 signifying a circular tube). Although good agreement was obtained from the finite element analysis compared to the experimental results, the authors emphasized that typical imperfections existing in the manufacturing process of the tubes could not possibly be accounted for by the analysis. They suggested using a non-linear finite element analysis to physically include these imperfections in the model. One way of including specimen irregularities and material inhomogeneities in modeling is to use the results of the available experiments to predict the behavior of composite tubes subjected to different loading. Artificial neural-networks (ANN) is a technique that uses existing experimental data to predict the behavior under a variety of testing conditions. Using this method, details regarding bonding properties between fiber & matrix, strength variation of fibers and any manufacturing-induced imperfections are implicitly incorporated within the input parameters fed to the neural network. Caliskan [13] has one of the few published studies dealing with the use of these networks in predicting the crushing energy absorption of carbon fiber-reinforced circular tubes under axial loading. A simple neural network with back-error-propagation algorithm was trained using 84 data sets of crush energy absorption of circular tubes obtained from the literature. Ten input parameters were fed into the network; these included material and geometric properties of the tubes. The network was then used to predict the specific energy absorption of a single tube. Comparing the average experimental results obtained from six tests to the ANN predictions resulted in an error of 14%. The author suggested that neural networks could more accurately predict the crushing behavior of these tubes if a more complex network was used or if the properties of all input parameters were experimentally measured rather than calculated using micromechanics and laminate plate theory. In a recent work, Mahdi and El Kadi [14] evaluated the prediction of both load-carrying capacities and energy absorption of elliptical composite tubes using artificial neural networks (ANN). In this study, the experimental behavior and corresponding ANN predictions of circular and elliptical tubes subjected to lateral compressive loads were presented and discussed. The ANN was shown to successfully predict the crushing behavior of tubes for a wide range of ellipticity ratios. The predicted results obtained from the neural network were compared with actual experimental data in terms of load-carrying capacity and energy absorption capability, showing an excellent agreement. It was concluded that ANN techniques could effectively be used to predict the response of collapsible composite energy absorber device subjected to different loading conditions. In the current work, the prediction of both load-carrying capacities and energy absorption for axially loaded elliptic composite tubes is evaluated using artificial neural networks (ANN). To test the validity of using ANN in determining the crushing behavior of these tubes, the study will compare the predictions obtained using ANN to the experimental results obtained from the literature [11] for various ellipticity ratios.

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2 Experimental Investigation The current work will make use of the comprehensive experimental program developed by Alkoles et al [11] which deals with the crushing behavior and energy absorption characteristics of axially loaded glass fiber/epoxy composite elliptical tubes. Axial quasistatic crushing tests were carried out on thin-walled glass/epoxy composite elliptical tubes with various ellipticity ratios by compressing them between parallel rigid plates. The load and displacements were recorded by an automatic data acquisition system and, as the quasistatic crushing tests were carried-out, instant photographs were taken throughout the test. Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 show the typical deformation history and corresponding load-end shortening path in elliptical composite tubes for the various ellipticity ratios considered. For more specific details about the load deformation relation of each of the tubes, one could refer to the work of Alkolose et al [11]. The experimental results are shown here for the sake of completeness and for proper comparison with the predictions obtained by the artificial neural networks introduced later in this work. Since the purpose of the current work is to gauge the effectiveness of ANN in predicting the crushing behavior of axially loaded composite tubes rather than compare the experimental results obtained in [11] to other published experimental result, only the experiments published in [11] will be used

Fig. 1 Typical load-end shortening path histories of axially loaded elliptical composite tube with a/b ratio of 1.00 [11] (With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media)

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Fig. 2 Typical load-end shortening path histories of axially loaded elliptical composite tube with a/b ratio of 1.25 [11] (With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media)

here. Using ANN to predict other experimental results published in the literature will necessitate training the networks using the corresponding experimental data. 3 Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) Artificial Neural Networks have emerged as one of the useful artificial intelligence concepts successfully used over the past decade in modeling the mechanical behavior of fiberreinforced composite materials (see for example [15, 16].) In general, ANN consist of a layer of input neurons, a layer of output neurons and one or more layers of hidden neurons [1719]. Neurons in each layer are interconnected to preceding and subsequent layer neurons with each interconnection having an associated connection strength (or weight). A training algorithm is commonly used to iteratively minimize the following cost function with respect to the interconnection weights and neuron thresholds: E
M N 1 XX di zi 2 2 1 i1

where M is the number of training patterns and N is the number of output nodes. di and zi are the desired and actual responses for output node i, respectively.

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Fig. 3 Typical load-end shortening path histories of axially loaded elliptical composite tube with a/b ratio of 1.50 [11] (With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media)

The training process is terminated either when the mean-square-error (MSE) between the observed data and the ANN outcomes for all elements in the training set has reached a pre-specified threshold or after the completion of a pre-specified number of learning epochs. Although all neural network models share common operational features, their underlying structures, input requirements and modeling and generalization abilities are different. Consequently, each paradigm would have advantages and disadvantages depending on the particular application. Hence, selecting the appropriate network class with suitable parameters is vital to ensure a successful application. The following neural network architectures will be considered here in predicting the crushing behavior in composite tubes: Feedforward neural networks (FNN) This is the most known and commonly used class of neural networks. Although the main success of neural networks has been in the application of the multilayer FNN with back-propagation training, they suffer from some drawbacks such as local convergence and the need for large training cases in order to make adequate modeling generalization [19]. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) RNN distinguish themselves from FNN in that the outputs from some neurons are fed back to the same neurons or to the neurons in preceding layers. Thus signal can flow in both forward and backward directions [18]. The Elman

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Fig. 4 Typical load-end shortening path histories of axially loaded elliptical composite tube with a/b ratio of 1.75 [11] (With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media)

neural networks (ENN) are multi-layer back-propagation partially recurrent networks, with the addition of a feedback connection from the output of the hidden layer to its input. In partially recurrent networks, the main network structure is feedforward. These feedforward connections are trainable. The feedback connections are formed through a set of context units and are not trainable. The context units memorize some past states of the hidden units, and so outputs of the network depend on an aggregate of the previous states and the current input [20]. Modular neural networks (MNN) The central idea behind such networks is task decomposition, where in this case the concept of using a combined (or averaged) estimator may be able to exceed the limitation of a single estimator [18, 19]. Using a modular network, the task of predicting the crushing behavior of composite tubes is split up among several local neural networks (sub-networks) not communicating with each other. Combination weights that determine the degree by which each sub-network should contribute to the final composite material properties are estimated with an integrating unit. Furthermore, this integrating unit decides which module should learn which training pattern.

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Fig. 5 Typical load-end shortening path histories of axially loaded elliptical composite tube with a/b ratio of 2.00 [11] (With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media)

4 Prediction of Axial Load-Carrying Capacity The three neural network architectures introduced were used to predict the axial load carrying capacity of the elliptic composite tubes. The Neurosolution-5 software [21] was used to construct, train and test the networks. In all cases, the input experimental data to the network was the ellipticity ratio and the specimen deformation. The output was the tube load-carrying capacity. In each case, the network was trained using all but one of the ellipticity ratios obtained experimentally. The network was then required to predict the behavior of the composite tube for the ellipticity ratio it was not trained for. The predictions obtained were then compared to the experimental results for this ellipticity ratio. Once assured that the predictions obtained are reliable, the network could be used in the future to predict the behavior of a tube with any ellipticity ratio for which experimental results do not exist. Ellipticity ratios of 1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75 and 2.0 were used in this study. Since the ANN cannot be accurately used to predict behavior outside the area of training, predicting the behavior of the elliptic tubes with 1.0 and 2.0 ellipticity ratios was not attempted. In the work done for transverse loading [14], the effect of the number of hidden layers and the number of neurons per layer was not considered. This is because the main goal of that study was to establish the feasibility of using ANN to predict the crushing behavior of

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composite tubes. In the current study, the effect of varying the number of hidden layers as well as the number of neurons per layer was also examined. Prediction was attempted using the three above-mentioned ANN configurations with one and two hidden layers. The number of training epochs was held constant at 5,000 epochs. Tables 1, 2, 3 show the mean square error obtained from the predicted values of the loaddisplacement relation of the tubes compared to the experimental data for each of the three eccentricity ratios (1.25, 1.5, and 1.75). The tables show the effect of varying the neural network architecture, the number of hidden layers and the number of neurons per hidden layer. Although no single neural network configuration consistently resulted in the best load-displacement predictions, predictions using ANN with two hidden layers consistently lead to lower MSE values when compared to experimental data. Figures 6, 7, 8 graphically compare the load-displacement relationship obtained experimentally to typical predictions from the three neural networks for each of the three eccentricity ratios investigated. In these figures, FFN1 and FFN2 relate to predictions obtained using feedforward neural networks with one and two hidden layers respectively, ENN1 and ENN2 relate to predictions obtained using Elman neural networks with one and two hidden layers respectively, and MNN1 and MNN2 relate to predictions obtained using modular neural networks with one and two hidden layers respectively. The predictions obtained using the Elman neural network with one and two hidden layers were the only type of ANN able to match the experimental behavior at low deformations; all other ANN structures predicted an initial load carrying capacity at the start of the test. From these typical results, it can be concluded that artificial neural networks can, in general, be used to predict the load-displacement relationship for the composite elliptical tubes subjected to axial loading.

5 Crushing Behavior In order to study the effects of a/b ratio on the crashworthiness of elliptical composite tubes, the instantaneous load is normalized with respect to the cross section area of the tube. Crush stress were chosen to eliminate the influence of different cross-section area so that the effect of ellipticity ratio remains. Accordingly, Fig. 9 describes the variation of the instantaneous crush stress with ellipticity ratio. Experimental results show that the load carrying capacity at pre-crush failure stage is independent of the ellipticity ratio. On the other hand, the load carrying capacity at post crush failure stage is strongly sensitive to the ellipticity ratio. The same figure also shows the predicted crush stress using the ANN. The recurrent neural network (ENN) resulted in the best predictions and was therefore used here. The figure shows that these networks accurately predict the crushing stress behavior. They also accurately show the independency of the crush behavior of the elliptic tubes at the pre-crush
Table 1 MSE for eccentricity ratio=1.25 One Hidden Layer Number of neurons per layer 6 FFNN ENN MNN 0.0298 0.0218 0.0266 8 0.0243 0.0219 0.0238 10 0.0279 0.0194 0.0169 12 0.0242 0.0233 0.0266 16 0.0237 0.0294 0.0150 Two Hidden Layers Number of neurons per layer 6 0.0181 0.0192 0.0258 8 0.0242 0.0174 0.0259 10 0.0146 0.0172 0.0165 12 0.0192 0.0194 0.0171 16 0.0173 0.0163 0.0142

Appl Compos Mater (2008) 15:273285 Table 2 MSE for eccentricity ratio=1.50 One Hidden Layer Number of neurons per layer 6 FFNN ENN MNN 0.0316 0.0256 0.0323 8 0.0237 0.0293 0.0311 10 0.0274 0.0299 0.0311 12 0.0254 0.0244 0.0263 16 0.0311 0.0188 0.0300 Two Hidden Layers Number of neurons per layer 6 0.0150 0.0230 0.0260 8 0.0096 0.0180 0.0210 10 0.0192 0.0167 0.0107 12 0.0073 0.0160 0.0146 16

281

0.0337 0.0074 0.0151

failure stage as well as the dependency on the ellipticity ratio during the post-crush failure stage; the same behavior identified by the experimental data presented in [11]. In spite of the fact that the ANN accurately predict the overall crush stress-strain behavior at various ellipticity ratios, one can notice a slight deviation in the predicted trend for the ellipticity ratio of 1.25; this is especially clear for the crush strain range of 0.1 to 0.45. The deviation between the experimental behavior and the ANN prediction can be related to the dissimilar trend of the experimental data for the ellipticity ratio of 1.25 compared to all other experimental results. Since the ANN depends on the training data to predict the behavior at a certain ellipticity ratio, having this particular behavior different from all data used in the training set would understandably result in a deviation in the prediction.

6 Prediction of Energy Absorption Capability Energy absorption capability during the structural crash is a requirement for the complete spectrum of passenger transport vehicles. The total work done during the axial crushing of the tubes is equal to the area under the load-displacement curve. Instantaneous specific energy absorption capability of the elliptical composite tube defined as the energy absorbed per unit mass was computed. Figure 10 shows the experimental relation between specific energy absorption and the deformation for the elliptic tubes with different eccentricity ratios [11]. The figure also shows typical predicted results obtained using artificial neural networks. Since, as mentioned before, load-deformation predictions using ENN were more accurate than those obtained with other types of ANN structures; they also resulted in the best energy absorption predictions and were therefore used here for comparison purposes. The average error in predicting the energy absorption capability for the ellipticity ratios of 1.25, 1.5 and 1.75 were calculated to be 14.3%, 9.5% and 31.5% respectively. The percentage error obtained for the ellipticity ratio of 1.75 is greatly exaggerated by the high error obtained at the very low values of deformations. As the deformation increases, the
Table 3 MSE for eccentricity ratio=1.75 One Hidden Layer Number of neurons per layer 6 FFNN ENN MNN 0.0170 0.0125 0.0249 8 0.0180 0.0180 0.0133 10 0.0110 0.0133 0.0166 12 0.0189 0.0155 0.0147 16 0.0114 0.0166 0.0211 Two Hidden Layers Number of neurons per layer 6 0.0107 0.0163 0.0155 8 0.0156 0.0125 0.0156 10 0.0107 0.0188 0.0113 12 0.0065 0.0129 0.0103 16 0.0083 0.0198 0.0096

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Fig. 6 Typical experimental vs. predicted load-deformation behavior of axially-loaded composite tubes with an eccentricity ratio of 1.25

Fig. 7 Typical experimental vs. predicted load-deformation behavior of axially-loaded composite tubes with an eccentricity ratio of 1.50

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Fig. 8 Typical experimental vs. predicted load-deformation behavior of axially-loaded composite tubes with an eccentricity ratio of 1.75

Fig. 9 Crush stress-strain behavior of elliptical composite tubes: experimental results vs. ANN predictions

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Fig. 10 Specific energy absorption-deformation curves of elliptical composite tubes: experimental results vs. ANN predictions

error decreases significantly. Also, as expected, the ellipticity ratio of 1.5 which falls midway through the range of tested data gave the most accurate predictions. Figure 10 shows that, in general, ANN can suitably predict the energy absorption characteristics of axially-loaded elliptic composite tubes.

7 Conclusion The experimental behavior and corresponding ANN predictions of elliptical composite tubes subjected to axial compressive load were presented and discussed. The ANN has been shown to successfully predict the crushing behavior of a wide range of elliptic tubes. The predicted results obtained from the ANN were compared to actual experimental data in terms of load-carrying capacity, energy absorption capability and crushing load prediction, showing a very good agreement. In particular, the Elman Neural Network was shown to consistently lead to the best predictions of the experimental data. Additional work might be needed to determine whether ANN can also be used to accurately predict the crushing behavior of non-elliptical composite tubes. From the current work, it could be concluded that ANN techniques can be used to effectively predict the response of composite energy absorber devices with elliptical crosssections subjected to axial loading conditions.
Acknowledgment The author would like to thank Dr. El-Sadig Mahdi, Associate Professor in the Kulliyyah of Engineering at the International Islamic University in Malaysia for providing the experimental data used in this work.

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