Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 227, 155–166 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2018-00058-6

Regular Article

A highly effective energy mitigation system combining carbon nanotube and buckyballs

¹ Department of Aircraft Airworthiness Engineering, School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China
² Advanced Vehicle Research Center (AVRC), Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China
³ Aircraft/Engine Integrated System Safety Beijing Key Laboratory, Beijing 100191, P.R. China
⁴ Department of Automotive Engineering, School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China
⁵ Beijing Key Laboratory for High-efficient Power Transmission and System Control of New Energy Resource Vehicle, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China

^a e-mail: junxu@buaa.edu.cn

Received: 28 July 2017
Received in final form: 7 February 2018
Published online: 10 September 2018

Abstract

By combining a carbon nanotube with buckyballs, a novel energy dissipation system is investigated for impact protection based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. To explore the energy mitigation mechanism of the carbon nanotube with buckyballs system (C₆₀-CNT), four types of C₆₀-CNT systems are considered. Computational results indicate that the deformation of buckyballs and the interaction between buckyballs and carbon nanotube play a critical role for the energy mitigation of C₆₀-CNT system. And results also show that the energy dissipation efficiency of C₆₀-CNT system is higher than water-CNT system, and more than 50% of impact energy can be mitigated. Further, parametric studies are conducted by varying governing factors, including length and diameter of the carbon nanotube, the number of the buckyballs and impacting energy. Results may help to understand the underlying mechanism of C₆₀-CNT system for impact protection, and explore the promising candidates of non-liquid energy mitigation system.