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Mechanical properties of foam-filled hexagonal and re-entrant honeycombs

under uniaxial compression

Article  in  Composite Structures · January 2022

DOI: 10.1016/j.compstruct.2021.114922

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 1 Article published in
2 Composite Structures, Vol. 280 (2022) 114922
3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2021.114922

5 Mechanical properties of foam-filled hexagonal

6 and re-entrant honeycombs under uniaxial compression
7 Hui Chen Luo a, Xin Ren a, *, Yi Zhang a, Xiang Yu Zhang a, Xue Gang Zhang a, Chen Luo a,
8 Xian Cheng a, Yi Min Xie b
9 a
College of Civil Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China
10 b
Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials, School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne 3001, Australia
11 * Corresponding author.
12 E-mail addresses: xin.ren@njtech.edu.cn (Xin Ren)
13
14 Abstract
15 Auxetic materials have excellent mechanical properties, e.g., indentation resistance, shear resistance, fracture toughness
16 and energy absorption. However, the stiffness of auxetics is normally lower than that of solid structures due to the existence
17 of voids. In this study, to improve the mechanical properties of re-entrant honeycombs, a buffer material called slow
18 recovery foam is filled into re-entrant honeycombs. The mechanical properties and deformation patterns of slow recovery
19 foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs are investigated numerically and experimentally. Parametric studies are conducted to
20 investigate the effects of geometrical parameters on the Poisson’s ratio and energy absorption capacity. The results show
21 that filling foam into re-entrant honeycombs will prevent lateral buckling of the structure. Compared with foam-filled
22 hexagonal honeycombs, foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs have higher stiffness. With the increase of the strain rates, the
23 stiffness and energy absorption capacity of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs will increase. With the
24 increase of cell wall thickness and the decrease of cell angle, the energy absorption capacity of slow recovery foam-filled
25 re-entrant honeycombs will also increase. The results indicate that slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs are
26 promising in the field of protective engineering.
27
28 Keywords: Auxetic, Negative Poisson’s ratio, Re-entrant honeycombs, Energy absorption, Foam-filled.
29

30 1. Introduction
31 Conventional engineering materials contract when they are subjected to uniaxial tension and expand laterally when
32 they are compressed. As one of the most studied branches of mechanical metamaterials, auxetic materials exhibit a
33 counterintuitive deformation behavior [1-4], as shown in Figure 1. The materials with negative Poisson’s ratio, also named
34 as ‘auxetics’ by Evans et al. [5], have superior properties in the aspects of indentation resistance [6,7], shear resistance [8],
35 fracture resistance [9], surface homogeneity [10], permeability variability [11] and energy absorption performance [12].
36 So far, the preliminary applications of auxetic materials have extended to many fields such as artificial prosthesis [13],
37 textile materials, intelligent sensors [14-16], intelligent filters [11,17], protective pads [18], shock absorbers [19] and sound
38 isolators [20]. Huang et al. [21] proposed a novel type of 2D Seismic metamaterial composed of auxetic foam and steel to
39 attenuate seismic waves at ultra-low frequencies. Huang et al. [22] introduced auxetic structures into carbon nanotube-
40 reinforced composite (CNTRC) laminate. Ren et al. [23-25] proposed a new method to design three-dimensional auxetic
41 structures and combined this three-dimensional metal metamaterial with the tubular structure using 3D printing technology
1
1 to prepare metal auxetic tubes. The tubular structure shows obvious auxetic effect under compression and tension. Ren et
2 al. [26] designed auxetic nails by utilizing the concept of tubular structure. Zhang et al. [27] proposed a novel type of
3 tubular structure which is the first tubular structure with auxeticity in the wall thickness as well as in the radial direction.
4 Its closed surfaces of tube wall could broaden the applications of tubular structures in the fields of civil engineering and
5 mechanical engineering. Zhang et al. [28] designed a novel perforated negative Poisson’s ratio core buckling-restrained
6 brace (NP-BRB) for exploring the hysteretic performance of auxetic metamaterials under cyclic load.
7
8

10 Figure 1. Deformation of conventional and auxetic materials.

11 The concave structure is an important branch of auxetic materials, including re-entrant honeycomb model [29],
12 concave triangle model (double arrow model) [30] and star model [31]. Among these auxetic structures, the re-entrant
13 honeycomb is of particular concern due to its large auxetic effect and its ease of fabrication. However, its stiffness and
14 bearing capacity are much lower than that of the hexagonal honeycomb structure due to the unique topology structure of
15 the re-entrant honeycomb. This limits the application of auxetic materials in engineering [32]. An approach to design
16 auxetic metamaterials with excellent negative Poisson’s ratio effect and compression rigidity is to optimize the original
17 auxetic microstructure [33-35]. Logakannan et al. [36] proposed a novel auxetic unit cell aiming at improving the strength
18 and energy absorption of the auxetic structure consisting of the unit cells. Lu et al. [37] proposed a strengthened topology
19 base on a traditional re-entrant topology by adding a narrow rib into the unit cell of the re-entrant cellular structure. Tan et
20 al. [38] combined the characteristics of auxetic structures and hierarchical honeycombs, and proposed two re-entrant
21 hierarchical honeycombs constructed by replacing the cell walls of re-entrant honeycombs with regular hexagon
22 substructure and equilateral triangle substructure. Wang et al. [39] obtained a new auxetic honeycomb named as re-entrant
23 star-shaped honeycomb by combining re-entrant honeycombs and star-shaped honeycombs. Zhang et al. [40] proposed a
24 systematic methodology for defining a single parametric of variable stiffness scale factor (VSF) to generate auxetic unit
25 cell with variable stiffness.
26 Most composites are positive Poisson's ratio frames with fillers. Chen et al. [41] designed four types of innovative
27 foam-filled multi-cell composite panels (FMCPs) composed of glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) face sheets, GFRP
28 lattice webs, and polyurethane (PU) foam. Zhou et al. [42] studied a polymer encased sand structure experimentally. The
29 polyurethane (PU) cellular structures are consisted of periodically arranged hollow truncated hemi-ellipsoids with sand
30 particles filled inside. Wang et al. [43] manufactured the ex-situ ordered aluminum cellular structure filled tubes with
31 different filler types, filling ratios and filling positions were fabricated by inserting the ordered aluminum cellular structure
32 fillers into the aluminum tubes directly. Inspired by research about composites, more and more scholars have filled various
33 materials into auxetic frames and studied their mechanical properties in recent years. Novak et al. [44] manufactured hybrid
34 metamaterial with auxetic cellular structure and silicon filler and studied its enhanced mechanical properties. Yu et al. [45]
35 proposed re-entrant hexagonal unit cell specimens fabricated by aluminum alloy and polyurethane foam. Compared with

2
 1 the hollow re-entrant honeycomb, the foam-filled honeycomb has a higher specific energy absorption (SEA) capability
2 due to a higher plateau stress. Zhou et al. [46] filled the auxetic structure with foamed concrete of different densities to
3 obtain the auxetic filled structure. The experimental results show that the energy absorption characteristics of the structure
4 are related to the density of the foamed concrete fillings. As the density of filling material increases, the structure could
5 absorb more energy. Madke et al. [47] investigated the effectiveness of sandwich structure with auxetic 3D re-entrant
6 lattice core and semi-auxetic braided composite face sheets subjected to high-velocity impact.
7 At present, most re-entrant honeycomb composites are consisting of metals and conventional polymer foam. However,
8 these composites would be permanently damaged during compression and their auxetic effect is weak. Slow recovery foam
9 is a superior buffer material which has strong energy absorption capacity and high-volume compressibility. With the
10 enhancement of loading rates, the energy absorption capacity could increase. Slow recovery foam could be used repeatedly
11 without permanent deformation, resulting in a wide application in the fields of aerospace [48,49], vehicle engineering,
12 biomedicine and etc. However, to the best knowledge of authors, the studies related to the composites of filling re-entrant
13 honeycombs with slow recovery foam are rarely reported. Besides the effect of strain rates on Poisson’s ratio in re-entrant
14 composites is rarely investigated.
15 In this paper, to improve the mechanical properties of re-entrant honeycombs, slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant
16 honeycombs (SR) were designed and fabricated. Compression experiments at different strain rates of slow recovery foam-
17 filled re-entrant honeycombs were carried out to investigate to its stress-strain relationships, energy absorption capacity
18 and Poisson’s ratios. Besides, validated numerical models were employed to further investigate the performance of the
19 composites. In the parametric study, the effects of dimensional parameters on the energy absorption capacity and Poisson’s
20 ratios were discussed.

21 2. Design methodology and manufacturing process

22 2.1. Unit cell design
23 Two types of honeycomb structures are chosen for this study. According to the configuration of unit cell, the designs
24 in this study are classified as hexagonal and re-entrant. The design parameters of unit cell are as the height h, the thickness
25 t of the struts, the length l of the inclined strut, the internal cell angle θ and the out of plane thickness b of the struts (Figure
26 2). The dimensions of the two types of unit cells which are the same height and take up the same amount of space are
27 shown in Table 1. Specimens consist of 4×4 (width × height) number of unit cells, resulting in 175 mm × 40 mm × 109
28 mm for the re-entrant honeycomb and 173 mm × 40 mm × 109 mm for the hexagonal honeycomb (Figure 3).
29

31 Figure 2. Geometries of hexagonal and re-entrant unit cells.

32
33 Table 1. The dimensions of the two types of unit cells.
h (mm) t (mm) l (mm) θ (°) b (mm)
Hexagonal cell 14 1.5 14 30 40
3
 Re-entrant cell 28 1.5 14 30 40
1

3 Figure 3. Geometries of 3D printed honeycombs (scale bar: 20 mm):

4 (a) Hexagonal honeycomb; (b) Re-entrant honeycomb.

5 2.2. Fabrication of foam-filled honeycombs

6 The polymeric honeycombs were fabricated by using 3D printing technology with the base material of TPU 90A.
7 Two types of foam were used as the filling materials. Fabrication of the foam-filled honeycombs are carried out by cutting
8 foam into honeycomb shape with a professional foam cutter and inserting them manually into the unit cells (Figure 4). No
9 adhesive was used between the foam and the honeycombs. In this study, four types of foam-filled honeycombs were
10 fabricated, as is shown in Figure 5. Among them, the white foam is fast recovery foam (F), with a density of 38 kg/m3; the
11 yellow foam is slow recovery foam (S), with a density of 46 kg/m3.

13 Figure 4. Fabrication of the foam-filled honeycombs (scale bar: 20 mm).

4
2 Figure 5. Four types of foam-filled honeycombs (scale bar: 20 mm):
3 (a) Slow recovery foam-filled hexagonal honeycombs (SH); (b) Slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb (SR); (c) Fast recovery
4 foam-filled hexagonal honeycomb (FH); (d) Fast recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb (FR).

5 3. Experimental investigation of foam-filled honeycombs

6 3.1. Tensile tests of TPU specimens
7 Seven TPU standard dumbbell-shaped specimens were manufactured by 3D printing technology. The size of the
8 experiment specimen was determined referring to ISO 37: 2017 ‘‘International standard rubber, vulcanized or
9 thermoplastic - Determination of tensile stress–strain properties’’. The type I dumbbell-shaped specimens were used as a
10 standard specimen for uniaxial tensile experiment. The thickness of the dumbbell-shaped specimens is 2 mm. The size of
11 the specimen is shown in Figure 6.
12 All the specimens were stretched at a strain rate of 0.0667 s-1 until break. The main purpose of the TPU specimen
13 uniaxial tensile experiment was to obtain the material properties of 90A TPU, which can be used for the finite element
14 models and parametric analysis. The fitted stress-strain curve of the 90A TPU specimens are plotted in Figure 7.

16 Figure 6. Specimens and tensile tests:

17 (a) Size of specimens; (b) Seven TPU specimens; (c) Setup of the experiment.
5
 2 Figure 7. Stress-strain curves of TPU specimens.

4 Figure 8. Cubic polyurethane (PU) foam test samples (scale bar: 20 mm):
5 (a) Fast recovery foam (F); (b) Slow recovery foam (S).
6

8 Figure 9. Compression test of the polyurethane (PU) foam.

9 3.2. Compression tests of polyurethane (PU) foam

10 The two types of PU foam were cut into cubic samples (40 mm × 40 mm × 40 mm) (Figure 8). Compression tests
11 were performed on those cubic samples by using an MTS machine (Figure 9). Compression tests in displacement control
12 mode were carried out at strain rates of 0.00208 s-1,0.0208 s-1,0.104 s-1 and 0.208 s-1. The stress-strain curves of the
13 specimens are plotted in Figure 10 according to different strain rates. The results show that each curve contains three stages:
14 linear elastic stage, platform stage and densification stage.
15 Figure 10 clearly indicates that the strain rate has an effect on the mechanical properties of the PU foam, and the effect
16 is especially obvious for the slow recovery foam. With the increase of the strain rates, both initial peak stress and platform
17 stress of the slow recovery foam are enhanced.
18

6
2 Figure 10. Stress-strain curves of two types of foam at different strain rates.
3

5 Figure 11. Compression test and specimens (scale bar: 20 mm):

6 (a) Overall layout of the experiment; (b) The slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb.

7 3.3. Uniaxial compression experiment

8 Uniaxial compression on experiments were carried out using a universal testing machine (WANCE ETM104B) with
9 the measurement range of 10 kN and precision of 0.001 N. The uniaxial compression loading method was used and the
10 loading strain rates of the 7.64×10-4, 7.64×10-3, 3.82×10-2 and 7.64×10-2 s-1 were employed, respectively. Figure 11(a) is
11 the overall layout of the experiment. To characterize the changes in Poisson’s ratio of the specimens, the axial and lateral
12 strains must be measured. DIC (digital image correlation) method was used to measure the strain. The principle is to obtain
13 two different images in the deformation process of the measured specimen through the camera, and obtain the axial and
14 lateral displacement of the points according to the change of the position of the points in the two images. Sixteen marker
15 points were made on the surface of the specimen with black ink. Figure 11(b) shows the schematic diagram of marker
16 points for calculating Poisson’s ratio of the specimen by DIC method. The equivalent Poisson’s ratio of the specimen can
17 be calculated by the following formula:
𝑥𝑥
𝜀𝜀𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 ∆𝑥𝑥𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝐷𝐷𝑦𝑦 �𝑋𝑋𝑖𝑖(𝑗𝑗+1) −𝑋𝑋𝑖𝑖(𝑗𝑗−1) � 𝐷𝐷𝑦𝑦
18 𝜈𝜈𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 = − 𝜀𝜀𝑦𝑦 = − ∆𝑦𝑦 ∙ 𝐷𝐷 = − �𝑌𝑌 ∙ 𝐷𝐷 (2 ≤ 𝑖𝑖 ≤ 3, 2 ≤ 𝑗𝑗 ≤ 3) (1)
𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑥𝑥 (𝑖𝑖−1)𝑗𝑗 −𝑌𝑌(𝑖𝑖+1)𝑗𝑗 � 𝑥𝑥

1
19 𝜈𝜈̅ = 4 ∙ ∑ 𝜈𝜈𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 (2 ≤ 𝑖𝑖 ≤ 3, 2 ≤ 𝑗𝑗 ≤ 3) (2)

20 Dx, Dy are the horizontal and vertical distance of consecutive points of undeformed specimens, respectively. i and j
21 are the corresponding labels of the points in Figure 11(b). X, Y are the real-time coordinates of the points.
7
2 Figure 12. Deformation patterns of the hollow honeycombs (scale bar: 20 mm):
3 (a) The hexagonal honeycomb; (b) The re-entrant honeycomb.
4

6 Figure 13. Stress-strain curves of two types of honeycombs.

7 4. Results and discussion

8 4.1. Response modes

9 The deformation patterns of hexagon and re-entrant honeycombs under uniaxial compression are shown in Figure 12.
10 The compressive deformation of the hexagonal honeycomb starts from the loading and supporting end, then gradually
11 extends to the middle part until the structure is densified. The hexagonal honeycomb appears to be a reclining V-shaped
12 deformation pattern. When the strain reaches 0.06, the re-entrant honeycomb is buckling laterally. When the deformation
13 of the re-entrant honeycomb assumes a global buckling behavior, the stress reaches a plateau stage, as is shown in Figure
14 13. In the process of compression, the hollow re-entrant honeycomb could not exhibit remarkable negative Poisson’s effect,
15 and the instability of the structure occurs in the initial stage. The main reason for the difference in symmetric and
16 asymmetric deformation of honeycombs is the lack of the re-entrant honeycomb’s lateral stiffness. The re-entrant
17 honeycomb quickly bent to one side in the process of compression due to the lack of horizontal support. However, the
18 hexagonal honeycomb has sufficient support in the horizontal direction. Therefore, in the process of compression, the
19 deformation mode of hexagonal honeycomb is more stable than that of re-entrant honeycomb.
20

8
2 Figure 14. Deformations patterns of the slow recovery foam-filled honeycombs (scale bar: 20mm): (a) Slow recovery foam-filled hexagonal
3 honeycomb (SH); (b) Slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb (SR).
4

6 Figure 15. Deformations patterns of the fast recovery foam-filled honeycombs (scale bar: 20mm): (a) Fast recovery foam-filled hexagonal
7 honeycomb (FH); (b) Fast recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb (FR).
8
9 Figure 14 illustrates the deformation patterns of the slow recovery foam-filled honeycombs under quasi-static
10 compression. When the strain reaches 0.11, the foam in the hexagonal unit cell begins to separate from the inclined struts
11 of the voids. Some gap appears between the foam and the inclined struts. Unlike the hollow hexagonal honeycomb, the
12 deformation of unit cells in each layer of SH is uniform in the process of compression. When the strain reaches 0.21, the
13 middle part of SR begins to shrink inwards. No lateral buckling of the structure occurs and it appears to be an X-shaped
14 deformation pattern. In the process of compression, SR exhibits remarkable auxetic effect. And the auxetic effect gradually
15 diminishes with increasing compression strain. Figure 15 shows the deformation of fast recovery foam-filled honeycombs.
16 It is similar to the deformation pattern of slow recovery foam-filled honeycombs. However, the mechanical properties of
17 the two types of foam are different.
18 No damage was occurred for the hollow honeycombs and the foam-filled honeycombs, due to foam and TPU are both
19 hyper-elastic materials. Filling foam offers the honeycombs supporting forces in all directions, thus changing the
20 deformation mode of the structures. Due to the low Young’s modulus of TPU, the re-entrant honeycomb lacks lateral
21 stiffness. While the structure is under compression, lateral buckling occurs very quickly. Filled foam could effectively
22 enhance the stiffness of the pure re-entrant honeycomb structures.

23 4.2. Energy absorption under quasi-static compression

24 At present, the initial peak stress, total energy absorption, specific energy absorption (SEA) and energy efficiency are
25 usually used to evaluate the energy absorption capacity of materials.
26 Densification strain 𝜀𝜀𝑑𝑑 is an important parameter for calculating the energy absorption capacity of porous materials,
27 and energy efficiency is widely used to determine the densification strain of porous materials [50,51]. The densification
28 strain of the material can be determined by the strain value corresponding to the peak point of the energy efficiency. The
29 energy efficiency can be calculated by the following formula:

9
 𝜀𝜀
∫0 𝑎𝑎 𝜎𝜎(𝜀𝜀) 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑
1 𝐸𝐸𝐹𝐹 (𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎 ) = 𝜎𝜎𝑎𝑎
, 0 ≤ 𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎 < 1 (3)

2 𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎 refers to the strain value of the specimen at a certain moment, 𝜎𝜎𝑎𝑎 is the stress value corresponding to 𝜀𝜀 = 𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎 , and
3 the densification strain 𝜀𝜀𝑑𝑑 can be obtained by the maximum energy absorption efficiency, i.e.
𝑑𝑑𝐸𝐸𝑓𝑓 (𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎 )
4 𝑑𝑑𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎
|𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎 =𝜀𝜀𝑑𝑑 = 0, 0 ≤ 𝜀𝜀𝑎𝑎 < 1 (4)

5 The total energy 𝐸𝐸𝑎𝑎 absorbed by the material can be obtained by the force-displacement curve integral:
𝑙𝑙
6 𝐸𝐸𝑎𝑎 = ∫0 𝑃𝑃 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 (5)
7 l is the displacement measured by the experimental instrument at any moment before the densification strain is reached.
8 P is the pressure value corresponding to the displacement value. In structural protection, the more energy absorbed by the
9 structure, the better its protective performance and impact resistance.
10 Specific energy absorption refers to the ratio of the total energy absorbed by the structure to the total mass of the
11 structure:
𝐸𝐸
12 𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆 = 𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑎 (6)
13 Figure 16 shows the stress-strain curves of the specimens under quasi-static compression. It observed that the foam-
14 filled honeycombs go through the elastic stage, the platform stage and the densification stage. During the elastic stage, the
15 force increases linearly with the increasing of displacement, the curve’s slope of foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs is
16 higher than that of the hexagonal honeycombs. Compared with the foam-filled hexagonal honeycombs, the re-entrant
17 honeycombs enter the platform stage earlier. During the plateau stage, the platform stress of the foam-filled re-entrant
18 honeycombs is higher than that of the foam-filled hexagonal honeycombs. Due to the deformation patterns of the foam-
19 filled re-entrant honeycombs, the structure exhibits greater bearing capacity than the foam-filled hexagonal honeycombs.
20 In the process of compression, the re-entrant composites have remarkable auxetic effect, which gathers the foam inward
21 and accelerated the densification of the structures.
22 The calculated equivalent Poisson’s ratio for two types of foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs and the empty re-entrant
23 honeycomb is presented in Figure 17. As can be seen from Figure 17, the trend of Poisson’s ratio curves of the foam-filled
24 re-entrant honeycombs is consistent. With the increase of strain, the curves tend to be smooth, indicating that the auxetic
25 effect weakened gradually. However, the empty re-entrant honeycomb has obvious auxetic effect before the strain reaches
26 0.1. Then the auxetic effect weakened soon.

27

29

10
1

3 4.3. Energy absorption at different strain rates

4 In order to study the effect of strain rate on the energy absorption of foam-filled honeycombs, four different loading
5 rates were chosen as follows: strain rates of 7.64×10-4, 7.64×10-3, 3.82×10-2 and 7.64×10-2 s-1. Figure 18 shows the stress-
6 strain curves of four types of foam-filled honeycombs at four different strain rates. It can be seen that with the increase of
7 strain rate, the stress value of the slow recovery foam-filled honeycombs has a significant increase. However, the stress-
8 strain curves of the fast recovery foam-filled honeycombs are relatively dense under the load with different strain rate.
9 This suggests that the strain rate has no obvious effect on the strength of the fast recovery foam-filled honeycombs. And
10 the densification points of the fast recovery foam-filled honeycombs are almost constant at different rates. However,
11 increasing the strain rate would slightly advance the densification of the slow recovery foam-filled honeycombs.
12 Figure 19 shows two types of foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs’ Poisson’s ratio at different strain rates. As can be
13 seen from Figure 19, with the increase of the strain rate, the Poisson’s ratio of the fast recovery foam-filled re-entrant
14 honeycomb does not change significantly. However, with the increase of strain rate, the auxetic effect of the slow recovery
15 foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb is gradually weakened. This is because the stiffness of the slow recovery foam is
16 enhanced by the increase of the loading rate, thus resisting the deformation caused by the re-entrant honeycomb frame.

11
 1

9 Ingrole et al [52] indicated that re-entrant honeycombs can absorb 27% more energy than the hexagonal
10 configurations. The SEA-strain curves of the specimens at different strain rates are shown in Figure 20. During the
11 compression process, the re-entrant honeycombs contracted inward, stronger interaction was created between the foam
12 and the frame, so more energy was absorbed by the foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs. As can be seen from the Figure 20,
13 the fast recovery foam-filled honeycombs show a stronger energy absorption capacity at the strain rate of 0.00076 s-1.
14 However, with the increase of strain rate, the SEA of slow recovery foam-filled honeycombs gradually increases and
15 exceeds that of fast recovery foam-filled honeycombs. The SEA of fast recovery foam-filled is almost constant at different
16 strain rates. This indicates that with the increase of strain rates, slow recovery foam is more suitable for filling the interior
17 of the cell as a buffer and energy absorbing material.

12
1 `

3 5. Finite element (FE) analyses

4 5.1. FE model validation
5 Numerical simulation is performed by commercial software package Abaqus. The FE models are shown in Figure 21.
6 The material model of honeycomb structures is hyper-elastic material. The density of honeycomb structures is 1040 kg/m3.
7 The equiaxial test data of honeycomb structures was obtained by averaging 7 curves addressed using tension test of 3D
8 printed dumbbell-shaped specimens (Figure 7). The material model of slow recovery foam with strain rate sensitivity is
9 low-density foam. The density of foam is 46 kg/m3. The uniaxial compression test data of slow recovery foam was obtained
10 from the compression tests of cubic samples at different strain rates (Figure 10). The honeycombs and the foam are
11 modelled by solid elements. Since there is no bond between the foam and the unit cell, the interaction of the structure is
12 defined by general contact in the FE models. Friction coefficient value is set to 0.4 for tangential contact interaction. The
13 structure is compressed between two discrete rigid bodies. The discrete rigid body at the bottom is fixed, while the rigid
14 body at the top moves down at a speed of 8.33 mm/s for a distance of 75 mm. C3D8R solid elements are employed in the
15 model. The global seed size of the honeycomb structure is 0.5 mm.
16 The convergence analysis with mesh size 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 mm were carried out on the slow recovery foam filled re-
17 entrant honeycomb. The stress-strain curves of the specimen shown in Figure 22 suggested that with the element size is
18 smaller, the stress decreases gradually and tends to be stable. In order to improve the computation efficiency and maintain
19 adequate accuracy, a mesh size of 3 mm was employed in the finite element models, considering that the difference between
20 mesh size of 3 mm and 1mm is tiny.

13
 1

5 The validity of the numerical simulation can be judged by comparing the deformation process and stress-strain curve
6 of the experiment and simulation. The deformation process of the FE model is shown in Figure 23. By comparing the test
7 process in Figure 14, it can be found that the deformation process of the slow recovery foam-filled two types of
8 honeycombs is basically the same as that of the simulation. Figure 23 shows that the stress is mainly concentrated on the
9 inclined ribs of the honeycombs during the process of compression. The stress-strain curves of FE models and test are
10 shown in Figure 24. It can be seen from the figure that in the elastic stage, the load of the finite element model is slightly
11 higher, while in the platform stage, the load of the experiment is slightly higher. Despite the difference is existed in the
12 elastic and platform stage, the overall trends of nominal stress-nominal strain curves between experiment and FE are
13 substantially coincident. The reason for the error may be that the accuracy of 3D printing is not high enough and that the
14 hand-cut foam is not the same size as the design, but the error is within the acceptable range. After that, parameterized
15 analysis is based on the FE models.

16

14
 1

3 5.2. Parametric studies of cell wall thickness

4 Considering that the wall thickness t of re-entrant honeycombs can influence the energy absorption and deformation
5 patterns of the structure. The thickness of the cell walls is set 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 mm, while the other parameters remain
6 unchanged. The compression speed is set 8.33 mm/s.
7 The stress-strain curves of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell walls thickness are
8 shown Figure 25(a), which suggests that with the wall thickness increases, the stiffness of the structure greatly increases.
9 However, the increase of wall thickness leads to the structure compacting in advance. Figure 25(b) shows the SEA-strain
10 curves of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell walls thickness. It is observed that as the
11 wall thickness increases, the SEA of the structure increases as well.

12

15 When designing the protective device for buffering and absorbing energy, the composite layer should not achieve
16 densification strain, otherwise the load transferred will increase rapidly with the increase of strain, which will cause damage
17 to the protected structure. Therefore, the energy absorbed when the strain is larger than the densification strain should not
18 be considered in the calculation of SEA. With this approach, the influence of cell wall thickness on SEA of slow recovery
19 foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs is presented in Table 2. The result still shows that the increase of wall thickness
20 improves the SEA of the structures.
21
22
15
1 Table 2. Energy absorption performance of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell walls thickness.
t (mm) m (kg) densification strain E (J) SEA (J/kg)
1.5 0.150 0.38 7.07 47.27
2.0 0.186 0.38 11.07 59.58
2.5 0.221 0.37 16.93 76.63
3.0 0.255 0.34 23.94 93.94
2 Note: t represents the thickness of the unit cell; m represents the mass of the model; E represents the total energy absorbed by the model; SEA
3 represents the model’s Specific Energy Absorption.
4
5 Figure 26 shows that Poisson’s ratio of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell wall
6 thickness in the process of compression. It is observed that the cell wall thickness has little effect on the auxetic effect of
7 the structures. With the increase of cell wall thickness, the auxetic effect of the structures increases slightly.

8
9 Figure 26. Poisson’s ratio-strain curves of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell wall thickness.

10 5.3. Parametric studies of cell angle

11 In order to study the influence of cell angle θ on the energy absorption and deformation mode of the structure, four
12 angles are set, namely 35°, 30°, 25° and 20°. The stress-strain curves of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs
13 with different cell angles are shown Figure 27(a). It is observed that both the initial stress peak and the platform stress
14 increase with the decrease of cell angle. As the angle of the cell decreases, the area of the cell increases, leading to an
15 increase in the volume of the foam filled, thus improving the overall bearing capacity of the structure.
16 Figure 27(b) shows the SEA-strain curves of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell
17 angles. It can be seen that as the angle decreases, the SEA of the structure increases. The energy absorption capabilities of
18 the structures of four angles are summarized in Table 3. All the above indicators indicate that the energy absorption
19 characteristics of the whole structure can be improved by appropriately reducing the cell angle within a certain range.
20

16
1
2 Figure 27. (a) Stress-strain curves of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell angles; (b) SEA-strain curves of slow
3 recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell angles.
4
5 Table 3. Energy absorption performance of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell walls thickness.
θ (°) m (kg) densification strain E (J) SEA (J/kg)
35 0.155 0.35 6.14 39.84
30 0.150 0.38 7.07 47.27
25 0.145 0.39 8.00 54.98
20 0.142 0.4 9.08 63.92
6 Note: θ represents the cell angle of the model.
7

8
9 Figure 28. Poisson’s ratio of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell angles.
10 Figure 28 shows that the Poisson’s ratio of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs with different cell angles.
11 It can be seen from the figure that the deformation trends of all models are consistent. The auxetic effect increases first,
12 and then turns to decrease when the strain reaches the region of 0.11 to 0.15. As the angle decreases, the auxetic effect of
13 the structures increases gradually. The reason is that the internal angle is small and the internal space of the cell is large,
14 leading the structure easy to deform and obtaining a large auxetic effect. On the contrary, the internal space of the cell is
15 small, leading the structure difficult to deform.
16

17
 1 6. Conclusion
2 In this work, two types of foam-filled honeycomb structures were introduced, which could be used in protective
3 engineering. The deformation modes and energy absorption performance of the two designs under different loading rates
4 were investigated experimentally and numerically. The effects of the cell wall thickness t and the cell angel θ on the foam-
5 filled re-entrant honeycomb were investigated, and some primary factors affecting energy absorption and Poisson’s ratio
6 were also examined. The following conclusions can be drawn:
7 1. Slow recovery foam can provide lateral stiffness for re-entrant honeycombs to effectively prevent lateral buckling.
8 2. Compared with the foam-filled hexagonal honeycombs, the foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs have higher stiffness
9 and bearing capacity.
10 3. With the increase of the loading rate, the energy absorption capacity of slow recovery foam-filled honeycombs
11 gradually increases, and the auxetic effect of slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb weakens.
12 4. The energy absorption capacity and auxetic effect of the slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb can be
13 increased by increasing the cell wall thickness t and decreasing the cell angel θ.
14 5. Cell wall thickness t has the greatest influence on energy absorption. To change the mechanical properties of the slow
15 recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycomb, the adjustment of the cell wall thickness t should be considered first.

16 Numerical and experimental results show that, the slow recovery foam-filled re-entrant honeycombs are superior
17 buffer composites for uniaxial crushing with high strain rates, resulting in broad application prospects in the fields of
18 aerospace and vehicle engineering.
19
20 Acknowledgments
21
22 This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 51978330, 51778283);
23 National Natural Science Foundation for the Youth of China (grant number 51808286); Natural Science Foundation of
24 Jiangsu Province (grant number BK20180710); and Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu
25 Province (grant number KYCX20_1009).
26

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