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Highlights Polyurethane has been widely studied as a lightweight reinforcing material. This paper uses two types of hollow glass microspheres to modify polyurethane in different proportions to prepare a variety of lightweight cores for reinforcing carbon fiber tubes. A quasi‐static lateral compression test was performed on the reinforced carbon fiber tube to analyze the effect of reinforcement materials on mechanical properties, failure modes and crashworthiness. The results show that BR20 reinforcement material has the best effect on enhancing the mechanical properties and crashworthiness of the structure, and its energy absorption is 3.5 times higher than that of carbon fiber tubes. Hollow glass microspheres can improve the reinforcing effect of polyurethane. Lightweight cores prepared from different types of hollow glass microspheres show different failure modes during lateral compression (polyurethane and BR60 show better ductility, and BR20 shows shear failure). The BR20 and BR60 are mixed in different proportions, the reinforced polyurethane foam reinforced carbon fiber tube can have little difference in the energy absorption. The addition of BR20 and BR60 showed a large difference in the force‐displacement curve during the compression stage. A qualitative analysis is conducted based on the effect of the total energy absorption of the structure on the reinforcement materials. The lightweight core is prepared by hollow glass microspheres and polyurethane. Reinforcement materials enhance the lateral compression performance. Reinforcement materials enhance the crashworthiness performance. Reinforcement materials affect failure modes. The proportion of BR20 and BR60 affects the performance of the lightweight core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]