To improve crashworthiness efficiency, aluminum foam has been adopted as one of new filler materials in engineering. Introduction of the foam material changes the crash behavior of structural component and make necessary exploration of more sophisticated design optimization methodology. This paper presents a crashworthiness design of foam-filled and empty columns made from mild steels and joined by spot-weld. The numerical analysis is carried out by Abaqus software. Subsequently, the collapse behavior of spot-welded structures was experimentally characterized. Finally in order to find more efficient and lighter crush absorber and achieving minimum peak crushing force, response surface methodology (RSM) has been applied for optimizing the square foam-filled and empty spot-welded columns.

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