Abstract: The paper aims to investigate the crashworthy behavior of composite thin-walled circular tubes under axial compression. Load-displacement curves and energy absorption characteristics were obtained under quasi-static axial crushing tests. A stacked shell model of the composite circular tubes was built by using explicit finite element software PAM-CRASH. Compared with the experimental results, the axial deformation process, initial peak load, mean crushing load and specific energy absorption of composite circular tube were analyzed to validate the finite element model and modeling approach of composite circular tubes. Based on the validated model, composite circular tubes of different layer sequences0/90_3s,0/90/0₂/90_2s,0₃/90_3s were studied by numerical simulation. Through the comparison of the theoretical value of buckling load and energy absorption characteristics, the influence of layer sequences on energy absorption characteristics of composite circular tubes were analyzed. The results show that the layer alternation of 0° and 90° has a great influence on the energy absorption characteristics of composite thin-walled circular tubes and it is possible to improve the energy absorption of the material by ensuring that the fiber failure mode dominates the structural failure.