Thermoplastic composite materials are well suited for the development and design of energy absorbing lightweight structures. In this work, the damage initiation and failure phenomena of half-circle and full-circle tubular specimens, made of a novel mat reinforced thermoplastic composite material under axial dynamic crushing is investigated experimentally and numerically. Different specimen configurations were examined in detail, where wall thickness, length of test specimen, specimen shape as well as angle of chamfer trigger are varied. A pronounced splaying failure can be identified for all configurations resulting in a stable progressive crushing, as well as very promising force–displacement responses in terms of peak force and specific energy absorption. For numerical analysis on structural scale, a high-fidelity multi-layered solid modeling approach is used to predict the damage initiation and failure progress.