Design of Energy-Absorbed Structures and Materials with Graded Configurations in the Automotive Body

In the past years, there has been an unremitting pursuit of lighter and safer energy-absorbing structural elements in the automotive body structure for better fuel economy, less gas emission and passenger safety. Recently, crashworthiness of advanced structures and materials with graded effects raised enormous concerns [1-3]. Graded structures/ materials could considerably reduce weight and improve performance by making reasonable designs of the gradient parameters.