An investigation on the energy absorption characteristics of a multi-cell hexagonal tube under axial crushing loads

Li Yang; Mingkai Yue; Zhen Li; Tong Shen; on behalf of The Chongqing postdoctoral research project

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0233708

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 24, 2019
22 Jan 2020 Decision Letter - Xin Yi, Editor PONE-D-19-30455 An investigation on the energy absorption characteristics of a multi-cell hexagonal tube under axial crushing loads PLOS ONE Dear Prof. Mingkai Yue, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Besides the reviewer's comments below, I suggest to present the contour plots of the strain or stress fields with the structure deformation in the revised manuscript. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Mar 07 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (1) The paper is very interesting and the topic of the paper falls within the scope of the journal. Overall, the paper is well organized and written. (2) The experimental and numerical analysis are too superficial, please add some analysis on the thin-walled structures under different loading angles. (3) Some very important pioneering works in the subject area are missing and should be well discussed in Introduction, especially some research on the thin-walled structures under crashworthiness. (4) Please expand figure captions so figures are almost self explanatory. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". 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Revision 1
6 Apr 2020 Author Response Response to the reviewer Comment1: The paper is very interesting and the topic of the paper falls within the scope of the journal. Overall, the paper is well organized and written. Response: Thank you for your constructive comments concerning our manuscript. Comment2: The experimental and numerical analysis are too superficial, please add some analysis on the thin-walled structures under different loading angles. Response: Thanks for your suggestion. It is really true as reviewer suggested that the loading conditions are too superficial. The energy absorber proposed in this paper was designed to improve the crashworthiness of railway vehicles. The train buffer is always subjected to the loading in the direction of moving under the constraint of railway. According to statistics, almost all train collisions involve frontal crash. According to the requirements of standards for train crashworthiness(BS EN 15227-2008), the structure shall meet the frontal impact condition with the speed of 10m/s. So, this paper only considered the crashworthiness under frontal impact condition to meeting the requirements of standard. Oblique loading condition involves complex multi-directional instability, which will be our future work direction. We have added the following explanation in manuscript: This paper aims to investigate the energy absorption of a new multi-cell tube design which was designed to improve the crashworthiness of railway vehicles. The train buffer is always subjected to the loading in the direction of moving under the constraint of railway. According to statistics, almost all train collisions involve frontal crash. According to the requirements of standards for train crashworthiness(BS EN 15227-2008) [43], the structure shall meet the frontal impact condition with the speed of 10m/s. So, this paper considered the crashworthiness under frontal impact condition to meeting the requirements of standard. [43] Technical Committee CEN/TC 256 Railway Applications, BS EN 15227-2008 Railway Applications: Crashworthiness Requirements for Railway Vehicle Bodies, British Standard Institution, London, 2008. Comment3: Some very important pioneering works in the subject area are missing and should be well discussed in Introduction, especially some research on the thin-walled structures under crashworthiness. Response: Considering the Reviewer’s suggestion, we have revised the Introduction and literature review. The application of thin-walled structures in the energy absorption system has been added in the manuscript. The pioneering works have also been introduced through the existing literature. The added literatures are as follows: [5] Andrews K R F, England G L, Ghani E . Classification of the axial collapse of cylindrical tubes under quasi-static loading[J]. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 1983, 25(9-10):687-696. [6] Wlodzimierz, Abramowicz, and, et al. Dynamic axial crushing of square tubes[J]. International Journal of Impact Engineering, 1984. [7] Abramowicz W, Jones N. Dynamic axial crushing of circular tubes[J]. International Journal of Impact Engineering, 1984, 2(3):263-281. [8] X. Zhang, G. Cheng, A comparative study of energy absorption characteristics of foam-filled and multi-cell square columns, Int. J. Impact Eng. 34 (11) (2007) 1739–1752. [9] Gao G, Dong H, Tian H. Collision performance of square tubes with diaphragms[J]. Thin-Walled Structures, 2014, 80:167-177. [14] Guangyong, S. On crashing behaviors of aluminium/CFRP tubes subjected to axial and oblique loading: An experimental study[J]. Composites Part B: Engineering, 2018. [15] Liu Q, Xu X, Ma J. Lateral crushing and bending responses of CFRP square tube filled with aluminum honeycomb [J]. Composites, 2017, 118B(JUN.):104-115. [18] Nia A, Kazemi M. Experimental study of ballistic resistance of sandwich targets with aluminum face-sheet and graded foam core[J]. Journal of Sandwich Structures & Materials, 2018:109963621875766. [28] Qiu N , Gao Y , Fang J , et al. Theoretical prediction and optimization of multi-cell hexagonal tubes under axial crashing[J]. Thin-Walled Structures, 2016, 102:111-121. [32] Qiu N , Gao Y , Fang J , et al. Topological design of multi-cell hexagonal tubes under axial and lateral loading cases using a modified particle swarm algorithm[J]. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 2018, 53(JAN.):567-583. [42] Pang T, Zheng G, Fang J, Energy absorption mechanism of axially-varying thickness (AVT) multicell thin-walled structures under out-of-plane loading. Engineering Structures 2019;196:112-122. Comment4: Please expand figure captions so figures are almost self explanatory. Response: We have improved our paper according to the reviewer's comment. The Fig.1, Fig.2, Fig.3, Fig.6 Fig.7, Fig.8, Fig.10, Fig.11 and Fig.12 have been revised. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233708.r002
12 May 2020 Decision Letter - Xin Yi, Editor An investigation on the energy absorption characteristics of a multi-cell hexagonal tube under axial crushing loads PONE-D-19-30455R1 Dear Dr. Yue, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. With kind regards, Xin Yi Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The authors have addressed my comments completely and hence I suggest the paper to be published in this current revised form. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233708.r003
Formally Accepted
28 May 2020 Acceptance Letter - Xin Yi, Editor PONE-D-19-30455R1 An investigation on the energy absorption characteristics of a multi-cell hexagonal tube under axial crushing loads Dear Dr. Yue: I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE. With kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Xin Yi Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233708.r004

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