Investigation of energy absorption characteristics of square paper tubes subjected to axial loading.

This paper investigates the collapse behavior of square paper tubes and the influence of tensile-compressive yield asymmetries of paper tube materials by combining the theoretical and experimental methods. An approximate energy absorption theoretical model is developed to predict the mean crushing force of square paper tubes subjected to axial loading. Besides, combined with the remarkable linear regularity of the experimental results, the numerical curve of the effective crushing distance ratio of paper tubes is obtained to improve the applicability of the proposed model. Then the theoretical results taking account of effective crushing distance are in excellent agreement with the experimental results. The proposed model can be used not only for the prediction of energy absorption characteristics of paper tubes in a logistics environment, but also to guide the protective packaging structure design with paper tubes. • The collapse behavior of square paper tubes under quasi-static compression is studied. • The influence of tensile-compressive yield asymmetries of paper tube materials. • A theoretical model is proposed to predict the mean crushing force of paper tubes. • An effective crushing distance curve is obtained to improve the model accuracy. • The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]