Honeycombs onset of failure and failure processes under in-plane loading

摘要

Cellular solids such as honeycombs and foams are widely used as structural materials for their low density and high specific stiffness. Under compression or shear loading, buckling may occur in cells, and complex deformation modes can result with sudden variation of the strength characteristics of the cellular material. In this paper the behavior of regular hexagonal honeycombs under general in-plane load is examined by experimental tests and numerical evaluations. Moreover, the influence of imperfections on the failure process is considered. A set of uniform deformation fields is imposed on several honeycomb models with different imperfections in order to achieve the overall strength properties, the principal buckling modes and the post-buckling behavior. All the numerical analyses are performed by means of an in-house made FEM code.