Abstract
Energy absorption is a very important topic which relates to a wide spectrum of engineering problems, including impact and crashworthiness analysis, engineering design, materials science, renewable energy technology, and injury mechanism. Over the last decade, the development of new materials and advanced experimental and numerical methods have led to revolutionary changes in areas related to energy absorption, such as the design of structures or new materials with enhanced energy absorption capacity under various loading conditions and the development of a combined experimental–computational approach in energy absorption modeling and analysis.
In order to present the most novel developments in the research fields related to energy absorption, we have organized the Special Collection “Design, Analysis, and Assessment of Energy Absorbers.” Seven papers are included in this collection, and the selected papers cover the following topics: the capacity of hierarchical honeycombs in absorbing crushing energy, the application of composite structures in electric light vehicles as energy absorbers to provide protection for pedestrians, variational mode decomposition in energy harvesting and distribution, the design of linear electromagnetic electric generator for harvesting vibration energy, crashworthiness optimum design of mini-bus body structures, and application of a combined experimental–numerical approach in structure–water interaction and wave energy technology.
A brief outline for each selected paper is given as follows.
“In-plane dynamic crushing and energy absorption capacity of self-similar hierarchical honeycombs” (An, Zhang, and Wu) presents a numerical study of the in-plane dynamic crushing behavior and energy absorption capacity of self-similar hierarchical honeycombs under different impact velocities using ANSYS LS-DYNA.
“Energy absorbing composite structure for frontal pedestrian protection in electric light vehicles” (Valladares, Alba, and Altubo) collects the development of a frontal composite structure for electric light vehicles with required energy absorption capabilities for pedestrian protection.
“Time delay estimation based on variational mode decomposition” (Lu, Ye, and Ma) proposes a generalized cross-correlation time delay estimation of colored noise signals based on variational mode decomposition of the energy of sound source signal.
“Linear electromagnetic electric generator for harvesting vibration energy at frequencies more than 50 Hz” (Cho and Kim) proposes a linear electromagnetic generator that can harvest vibration energy from a transformer and supply electricity to a monitoring system.
“Multi-objective optimization of crashworthiness for mini-bus body structures” (Gao, Zhang, and Feng) presented an optimum design of body structure of a mini-bus in order to improve its crash safety.
“Comparison between numerical analysis and the levitation mass method measurement test of a spherical structures early impacting water” (Wang, Shu, and Yusaku) provides a new validity check of crashworthiness analysis using a levitation mass method to precisely measure water impact loads of a spherical structure vertically dropping onto a calm water surface.
“Experimental and simulative study on throttle valve function in the process of wave energy conversation” (Zhang, Liu, and Li) studies the effect of throttle valve opening on power generation quality through AMESim simulation and semi-physical experiment.
We hope that the information disseminated through this Special Collection will provide a benchmark, from which an international forum of scientific and technical achievements in design, analysis, and assessment of energy absorbers, energy absorption systems, as well as other related branches will be established.
Finally, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the authors for their valuable contributions to this Special Collection. We are also thankful to all the reviewers for volunteering their effort and time in helping us to improve the quality of this collection.