Abstract: Geometrical nonlinearity, contact nonlinearity and materialnonlinearity caused by impact large deformation are considered. The finiteelement model is built to simulate the axial impacts of composite material tubes. The impact energyabsorption behavior of glass/epoxy tubes is analyzed. The calculation results agree wellwith the experiments, which assures the validity of this finiteelement model. The effects of lay angle on energy absorption capability ofcomposite material tubes are studied.