Refined model for effective in-plane elastic moduli and poisson's ratios of general hexagonal honeycombs
Conference Paper
Overview
Overview
abstract
Honeycomb structures are discrete materials at the macro scale level but their mechanical properties need to be calculated as a continuum material in order to simplify their design in engineering applications. For more than five decades, hexagonal honeycombs have been used as core materials of sandwich panels. For analysis purposes, these honeycombs were usually considered having straight walls. Close examination of commercial hexagonal honeycombs showed that the walls were curved in the vicinity of six intersection points of the hex due to corrugation or expansion production methods. Thus a refined representation of the in-plane properties of the core materials was needed to take into consideration such curvature. The effective mechanical properties of honeycombs subjected to quasi-static loading were studied by analytical and numerical means and correlated with experimental results for aluminum honeycombs. In particular, their effective in-plane elastic moduli and the in-plane Poison's ratios were studied and predicted as a function of radius of curvature at the intersection points, relative density and cell dimensions, considering the effect of bending, shear and axial deformations in both in-plane honeycomb directions. The refined model presents a general solution that can be reduced to predict the effective mechanical properties for straight-wall regular hexagonal honeycombs.
