Crashworthiness Behaviors of Carbon Fiber Filament‐Wound Thin‐Walled Tubes With Aluminum Honeycomb Filler: Experiments and Numerical Simulations

ABSTRACT To address the inadequate energy absorption capacity and low load efficiency of carbon fiber filament‐wound thin‐walled tubes, this study proposes the incorporation of an internal aluminum honeycomb core within the tubes. The performance of this filled design is compared to that of hollow tubes and externally combined honeycomb‐tube configurations. A winding‐informed multiscale finite element (FE) framework is developed to predict equivalent elastic properties, while quasi‐static compression tests are conducted to validate the model and elucidate failure mechanisms. The filled tubes demonstrate superior collapse performance, achieving an energy absorption of 510 J, a mean crushing force of 8.5 kN, a specific energy absorption (SEA) of 30 J/g, and a crushing force efficiency (CFE) of 69%. Compared to the standalone filament‐wound composites (FWC) tube, the filled design enhances energy absorption by 40%, mitigates global buckling, and transitions the response to stable progressive crushing with finer fragmentation. Experimental results confirm that hollow tubes fail due to global buckling, resulting in large fragments, whereas honeycomb‐filled tubes effectively alleviate this instability.