Introduction to Cellular Solids

What is a cellular solid?

Definition:

- The word cell derives from the Latin cella, meaning a small compartment.
- A cellular solid is an assembly of cells packed together to fill space.
- It is generally defined as structures having a relative density 0.3.

Examples:

- Natural cellular solids are able to create optimized structures in complex hierarchical geometries to
make materials highly tailored for their specific tasks, including high strength, high porosity, and
damage tolerance.

a) Apple flesh, b) balsa wood, c) bamboo, d) beeswax honeycomb, e) trabecular bone, f) Venus flower basket
sponge

- Artificial cellular solids can be made out of a wide range of materials and in many different
architectures. These lightweight structures have a huge range of applications including insulation
(space shuttle tiles), packaging (Styrofoam), structural applications (honeycomb sandwich panels),
filters (catalytic converters), high surface-area-to-volume ratio materials (battery cathodes), and
many more.

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Caltech 2015
 a) Polystyrene open-cell foam, b) aluminum honeycomb, c) bread, d) nickel inverse opal,
e) ultralight metallic microlattice, f) 3D Kagome nanolattice, g) Eiffel tower

Cell Structures:

- Regular Polygon: Any polygon that is equiangular (all angles are equal) and equilateral (all edges
are equal lengths).
- Regular Polyhedron: A polyhedron composed of regular polygons.
- Semi-regular Polyhedron: A polyhedron composed of 2 or more regular polygons.
- Eulers Formula: A polyhedron with faces, edges, and vertices must adhere to the
following relation to be convex

+ =2

- Of the polyhedral that satisfy the Euler relationship, there are:

o 5 Platonic solids Identical faces, edge lengths, and vertices.

All 5 Platonic (Plato) Solids

o 13 Archimedean solids Identical edge lengths and vertices, semi-regular faces

Representative Archimedean Solids

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 o 92 Johnson Solids Identical edge lengths, semi-regular faces

Representative Johnson Solids

o An infinite number of prisms and antiprisms

Pentagonal Prism and Anti-prism

o Eulers Law examples

Geometry Faces () Edges () Vertices () +
Tetrahedron 4 6 4 2
Octahedron 8 12 6 2
Cube 6 12 8 2
Dodecahedron 12 30 20 2
Icosahedron 20 30 12 2

- 2D Tessellations (Tilings)
o 3 Regular tilings Made of 1 type of regular polygon

Triangular, square, and hexagonal tilings

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 o 8 Semi-regular tilings Made of 2 or more identical regular polygons

Kagome and truncated square tilings

o Stochastic A commonly used stochastic tiling is a Voronoi tessellation.

o In 2D, it is constructed using the following methodology:
A finite set of points {1 , , } is defined in a Euclidean plane.
The boundaries of the Voronoi cells are equidistant to the 2 nearest sites.
The vertices are equidistant to the 3 nearest sites.
The resulting intersections create a set of convex polygons.

Voronoi Tesselation

- Space Filling Polyhedra

o A space-filling polyhedron is a polyhedron that can create a tessellation in 3D space.
o There are 5 convex space filling polyhedral with regular faces: 3 prisms (triangular prism, cube,
and hexagonal prism), rhombic dodecahedra, and truncated octahedra (tetrakaidecahedron)
o Prisms follow the same packing as their corresponding 2D structures.
o Rhombic dodecahedra are regular polyhedrons with 12 rhombic faces. They are also the inverse
of an FCC packing of spheres.

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 Rhombic dodecahedron construction and packing

o Truncated octahedra or tetrakaidecahedrons are regular polyhedrons constructed by

removing the corners of an octahedron. They were proposed by Lord Kelvin to be the most
efficient shape for packing of 3D spheres, meaning they had the lowest surface area to volume
ratio of any packed shape (1887).

Tetrakaidecahedron construction and packing

o Optimal Packing: Weaire & Phelan structure (1994)

These structures solved the problem of an optimal packing of convex polyhedra and have a
lower surface area to volume ratio than the packing of truncated octahedra.
They are composed of 2 different polyhedra: an irregular dodecahedron (12 pentagonal
faces), and an irregular tetrakaidecahedron (2 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal faces)
These 2 shapes combine in a 1 dodecahedron to 3 tetrakaidecahedron ratio.

ME/MS 162 Lucas R. Meza

Caltech 2015
 Assembly of Weaire & Phelan structure; the design of the Beijing Olympic water cube was based on the packing

Relative Density:

- In the context of cellular solids, relative density ( ) is defined as the solid volume of a given material
normalized by the volume of its corresponding unit cell. It can also be considered a solid volume
fraction.

=

- Relative density can also be defined as the density of a cellular material divided by the density of the
constituent material.

=

- Example in 2D
o Here we will take a unit cell of a triangular lattice composed of square bars (as seen below). The
bars will have length , width , and unit depth. There are 6 individual bars in the structure
(half of a bar for the structures at the edges). From here, we can calculate the simplified density
to be
6()
= = 23 ( )
3
We can see that there is additional interference at the nodes that we arent taking account of.
For slender structures, this is negligible, but for structures with larger , we can account for the
nodes using
6() ( 2 ) 2
= = 23 ( ) ( )
3

Triangular unit cell, unit cell with bars, and a zoom in on the central node of the lattice

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Caltech 2015
- Example in 3D
o Here we will investigate the relative density of an octahedron structure with cylindrical bars.
There are 12 bars in the structure, and we will take the size of the unit cell to be and the
radius of the bars to be . The length of the bars can be found to be /2, and all of them have
a cross sectional area of 2. From here, we can calculate the simplified relative density to be:

12 2 ( )
= 2
3
This approximation neglects the interference of the beams at the nodes and the cutoff of the
beams at the edges of the unit cell. Investigating the interfering volume of the beams, it can be
seen that they form cylindrical wedges. The volume of a half cylindrical wedge, also called a
2
cylindrical hoof (shown in the image below), is = 3 2. There are two beam intersection
angles in the octahedron, 60 and 90. The two heights are then = 3 and =
respectively. Summing across the 6 corners and the number of intersections at each corner, we
2
can say the lost volume at the nodes is = 3 2 ( + 3)(6)(42) = 3 with
61.82. The final relative density is

12 2 ( ) 3
2 2 3
= 3
= 62 ( ) ( ) = ( )

Octahedron unit cell with cylindrical bars, and an illustration of the interference of beams at the nodes

ME/MS 162 Lucas R. Meza

Caltech 2015