Composites Part B 162 (2019) 653–661

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Composites Part B
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compositesb

An experimental study on the compressive response of CFRP honeycombs T

with various cell configurations
Levent Pehlivana,b, Cengiz Baykasoğlua,∗
a
Hitit University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Çevre Yolu Avenue, 19030, Çorum, Turkey
b
Gümüşhane University, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Department of Geophysical Engineering, Gümüşhane, Turkey

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The experimental investigation on the compressive response of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) hon-
Honeycombs eycombs with various cell configurations was carried out in the present work. The CFRP honeycomb specimens
Carbon fiber reinforced polymer were manufactured by corrugation technique, in which the prepreg CFRP sheets were first corrugated into the
Cell configuration certain shape using corrugated aluminum moulds under heat and pressure, and then the corrugated CFRP sheets
Compressive response
were glued and stacked to construct honeycomb specimens. Twenty-seven groups of specimens were experi-
Experimental testing
mentally tested to examine the effects of cell geometry (i.e., square, circular, and hexagonal), cell wall thickness
and height on the quasi-static out-of-plane crushing performance of the honeycombs. The square, circular, and
hexagonal honeycomb specimen groups were designed to have almost the same weights. The results showed that
the cell wall thickness is an significant parameters on the overal crushing response of the CFRP honeycombs
while the out-of-plane compressive strenght of the honeycombs is generally independent of the height. It is
observed that the hexagonal specimen groups have generally superior crushing performance in comparison with
the square and circular counterparts due to their large double foil bonding surfaces. The experimental results
also revealed that the crushing properties of the honeycomb structures with the core densities of 157–282 kg/m3
could be increased more than two times with the appropriate selection of cell configurations.

1. Introduction
The usage of honeycomb structures in various industrial applica-
tions is continuously increasing due to their low weight-to-strength and
weight-to-cost ratios, high-energy absorption capacities and good
crashworthiness performances [1–4]. These structures are typically
used as the core material in sandwich panels and the filling material in
hybrid energy absorber tubes in recent decades [5–10]. The compres-
sive response and crashworthiness performance of honeycomb struc-
tures strongly depend on the material properties of honeycomb struc-
ture and geometric parameters of honeycomb cell [11]. Hence, it is
crucial to develop new honeycomb materials and geometric config-
urations to improve the crushing performance of such structures. At this
point, numerous theoretical, numerical and experimental studies have
been conducted for quantifying and enhancing the crushing perfor-
mance of honeycomb structures.
Most of the studies focused on metallic honeycomb structures.
Among them, aluminum honeycombs attracted much more attention
due to the ductility and lightweight features of the material [7,8]. More
recently, composite materials such as phenolic resin-impregnated
aramid paper, carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) and glass fiber
reinforced polymer (GFRP) were used as raw materials in order to de-
sign lightweight lattice [12–17] and honeycomb [18–29] core struc-
tures instead of the traditional metal core structures. Mechanical per-
formances of several composite lattice cores were evaluated and
experimental results were added to the Ashby material strength versus
density map [30]. According to the modified Ashby map
[15,23,25,28,29], composite honeycomb structures have generally
higher compressive strength than many other structures based on an
equal mass basis. For instance, the strength performance of CFRP pyr-
amidal structures were investigated in Refs. [13–15] in which it is re-
ported that these structures showed better strength characteristics than
several structures and materials including aluminum lattices, polymer
and metal foams. In addition, recent studies showed that the phenolic
resin-impregnated aramid paper honeycombs, commercial name
Nomex®, are promising core materials especially at low densities since
their compressive strength-to-density ratios are higher than those of
several structures and materials [23,31]. On the other hand, Russell
et al. [25] tested the quasi-static deformations and failure modes of
square CFRP honeycombs fabricated by slotted composite sheet

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: levent_pehlivan@gumushane.edu.tr (L. Pehlivan), cengizbaykasoglu@hitit.edu.tr (C. Baykasoğlu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2019.01.044
Received 27 September 2018; Received in revised form 21 November 2018; Accepted 7 January 2019
Available online 08 January 2019
1359-8368/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
L. Pehlivan, C. Baykasoğlu
methodology. The out-of-plane compressive strength capacities of the
CFRP square honeycombs with densities more than 100 kg/m3 were
found superior than most of the materials including several pyramidal
structures and square honeycombs made from steel having the same
density in Ref. [25]. These results showed that the CFRP honeycomb
structures could be particularly advantageous in applications where the
high strength and low weight combination is desired [24]. Moreover,
the compressive, shear and tensile properties and damage detectability
of the epoxy resin could be improved by using carbon-based nanos-
tructures into the resin; thus, the compressive and life-cycle perfor-
mances of CFRP honeycomb structures could be further improved
[32–35]. As a result, number of research studies on the CFRP honey-
comb structures has recently increased and these materials have begun
to be used in numerous applications. Park et al. [26] studied the uni-
axial dynamic compressive behavior of CFRP square honeycombs
manufactured through slotting, assembling and bonding procedures. Lu
et al. [27] fabricated CFRP honeycombs by compression molding
technique and investigated their mechanical performances. In com-
parison with the aluminum and Nomex® honeycomb sandwiches, CFRP
honeycomb sandwich was reported to have higher bending strength in
Ref. [27]. In another study, Yu et al. [28] fabricated a multifunctional
composite square honeycomb sandwich structure (MCHSS) via slotting
and assembling procedure similar to Refs. [25,26] and examined their
thermal and mechanical properties. The MCHSS is made from CFRP
composite laminate coated by highly oriented graphite film (HOGF) in
Ref. [28]. Besides, Vitale et al. [29] manufactured ultra-lightweight
CFRP cores with core densities less than 48 kg/m3 using an interlocking
method from flat laminates and investigated the compressive properties
of sandwich panels. Furthermore, Alia et al. [36] investigated the
compressive mechanical properties and energy absorption perfor-
mances of CFRP honeycomb structures manufactured via the vacuum-
assisted resin transfer molding method. In sum, all above mentioned
numerical and experimental investigations demonstrated the superior
mechanical performance of CFRP honeycomb structures indicating that
they are promising candidates for several applications.
Although several types of CFRP honeycomb structures were pro-
posed literature, limited experimental works were carried out on the
compressive response of CFRP honeycomb structures manufactured by
corrugation technique. To the best of our knowledge, there is no com-
prehensive comparative study on the compressive response and the
crushing performance of CFRP honeycombs with various cell config-
urations and cell parameters. At this point, the geometric parameters
can play a crucial role to improve the crushing performance of CFRP
honeycomb structures. Motivated by these facts, the CFRP honeycomb
structures having different cell geometries (i.e. square, circular, and
hexagonal), wall thicknesses (i.e. 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 mm) and heights
(i.e. 40, 60 and 80 mm) were first manufactured by corrugation tech-
nique; then, their compressive responses were examined and compared
under axial loading condition. The experimental results demonstrated
that the compressive response of CFRP honeycombs could be enhanced
with the proper selection of geometric parameters.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The configuration of
CFRP honeycomb specimens, their manufacturing processes and testing
procedure are described in Section 2, and the results of experimental
tests are presented and discussed in Section 3. Finally, the main findings
of this study are summarized in Section 4.
2. Materials and method
2.1. Materials
The composite honeycomb specimens used in experimental eva-
luations were manufactured from a pre-fabricated CFRP sheet material.
Composite sheets were made from 200 g/cm2 plain 3K fabric, fiber with
1–3 ply [0°, 90°] lay-up, the density of 1.7 g/cm3, the filament diameter
of 5–8 μm, the tensile strength of 3450–4850 MPa and the tensile
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Composites Part B 162 (2019) 653–661
modulus of 220–240 GPa. F11564 resin (Fibermak Composites) was
employed as the polymeric matrix having the epoxy equivalent of
5.8–6.05 eq/kg and the viscosity of 1250–1450 mPa s at 25 °C. On the
other hand, the employed hardener was F13487 (Fibermak Composites)
having the amine equivalent of 9.3–10.2 eq/kg and the viscosity of
30–70 mPa s at 25 °C. A 2-component epoxy adhesive (Fibermak
Composites) was finally used for bonding of corrugated sheets resulting
in a complete corrugated block. Tensile and flexural tests of cured
epoxy resin and CFRP sheets were performed in accordance with the
ISO 527 and ISO 178 standards [37–39]. The tensile strength, elonga-
tion at the tensile strength, ultimate tensile strength, ultimate tensile
elongation and tensile modulus of cured epoxy resin are 68–72 MPa,
4.7–5.0%, 63–69 MPa, 4.7–5.5% and 2900–3080 MPa, respectively.
Besides, the flexural strength, elongation at the flexural strength, ulti-
mate flexural strength, ultimate flexural elongation and flexural mod-
ulus of the cured epoxy resin are 115–125 MPa, 5.6–6.5%, 88–102 MPa,
5.8–7.1% and 2900–3080 MPa, respectively. On the other hand, the
failure tensile stress and strain of the CRFP sheets are 470–494 MPa and
2.0–2.3%, respectively.
2.2. Honeycomb designs
Honeycombs are prismatic periodic cellular structures or materials.
At this point, the cell geometries and corrugation patterns may sig-
nificantly affect the mechanical behavior of these structures. For in-
stance, the classifications of single and double foils of honeycomb cell
walls may vary when different cell geometries were considered in de-
sign phase, resulting in isotropic or anisotropic plane properties. In
addition, the cell geometry also affects the in-plane stretching strength
of honeycomb structures [40]. Furthermore, the cell wall thickness also
influences the surface properties, thereby may provide a considerable
increase in crushing strength. Moreover, the cell height may also sig-
nificantly influence the stability, shear and compressive strengths of the
CFRP honeycombs for certain structural configurations. Hence, the cell
geometry, cell wall thickness and cell height are considered as design
variables in this study.
As shown in Fig. 1, honeycombs block dimensions are defined using
three principle directions (i.e., height (H), length (L) and width (W)).
On the other hand, the dimensions of different cell geometries are de-
scribed by the diameter of incircle (D) and thickness of single foil (t),
e.g., see Fig. 1. At this point, the length and width of the CFRP hon-
eycomb blocks were selected as 80 mm. On the other hand, three dif-
ferent heights (i.e., 40, 60 and 80 mm) and corrugated sheet thicknesses
(i.e., 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 mm) were considered in designs. Besides, the
cell size of all model (i.e., the diameter of incircle) is selected as 10 mm.
In this study, axial (H-directional) crushing of CFRP honeycomb
structures was investigated since it provides the best crushing perfor-
mance and has been widely used in practice.
The CFRP specimens were grouped according to their cell geome-
tries (i.e., square “S”, circular “C” and hexagonal “H”), cell wall
thicknesses (i.e., 0.25 mm “T1”, 0.50 mm “T2” and 0.75 mm “T3”),
heights (i.e. 40 mm “H1”, 60 mm “H2” and 80 mm “H3”). For instance,
S-T2-H2 denotes CFRP honeycombs with the square cell, the cell wall
thickness of 0.5 mm and the height of 60 mm. Thus, the total 27 groups
were defined in this study. Note that, the square honeycomb cores could
be designed in two different ways (i.e., the whole or half-square sec-
tions). In this study, only the whole square honeycomb designs having
only edge contacts between corrugated sheets were used to consider the
lowest possible compressive strength limits of the proposed CFRP
honeycomb cores. At this point, the square honeycomb specimens could
be also designed with half-square corrugated sheet design having sev-
eral double foil bonding surfaces to improve compressive performance
of these structures.
L. Pehlivan, C. Baykasoğlu
Fig. 1. The components of corrugation manufacturing process and geometric configurations of the proposed CFRP honeycomb structures.
2.3. Manufacturing process
The corrugation method is employed to fabricate the CFRP honey-
comb specimens [41]. When compared with the manufacturing of tra-
ditional metallic lattice structures, this method has a relative easiness in
manufacturing. In the corrugation method, the CFRP sheets are first
corrugated into the certain shape using corrugated moulds (e.g., Fig. 2),
and then the corrugated sheets are glued and stacked to build honey-
comb blocks. Finally, the blocks can be sliced into pieces of the required
dimensions (e.g., Fig. 3). The proposed manufacturing scheme is also
illustrated in Fig. 1.
During the manufacturing stage of CFRP sheets, the separator wax
was first applied on the mould surfaces to ease the separation without
deformation and then, carbon fiber and epoxy resin were placed on the
moulds. At this point, the square, circular and hexagonal bars were used
to provide an integrity in the moulds. The molding process was
Fig. 2. The manufactured aluminum square, circular and hexagonal moulds and the corresponding corrugated CFRP sheets.
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performed by applying pressure under a load of 100 kg on a tempera-
ture controlled vacuum infusion machine. On the other hand, curing
process is summarized as follows: Firstly, the curing temperature
reaches 100 °C in 15 min and specimens cure for 1 h under these con-
ditions. Following, the curing temperature gradually decreases to 75 °C
and 50 °C for 1.5 h and then decreases to the room temperature. Finally,
the corrugated sheets having the cell wall thickness of t, 2t and 3t (i.e.,
0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 ± 0.05 mm) are manufactured after the curing
process. In order to build honeycomb blocks, the corrugated sheets are
glued together using epoxy adhesive by considering the scheme illu-
strated in Fig. 1. Subsequently, the CFRP honeycomb blocks are cut by a
watery diamond saw cutting machine and honeycomb test specimens
are fabricated according to the dimensions mentioned in Section 2.2.
Note that, there is no edge rounding in aluminum moulds. However, a
micro-rounding occurs naturally during manufacturing process of cor-
rugated sheets which is about 0.75 mm. In addition, micro-damage of
L. Pehlivan, C. Baykasoğlu
Fig. 3. The manufactured square, circular and hexagonal test blocks.
fabric was not observed during corrugation processes. The honeycomb
test specimens were manufactured according to the American Society
for Testing and Materials (ASTM) C365-03 standard [42]. The manu-
factured aluminum moulds, corrugated CFRP sheets and CFRP honey-
comb blocks are shown in Figs. 2 and 3.
2.4. Crushing tests and crushing performance parameters
The quasi-static out-of-plane compression tests were performed to
obtain the force-displacement curves, deformation modes and the re-
lated crushing performance parameters. The quasi-static tests were
conducted using Besmak BTM-600S universal testing machine with a
600 kN load cell. To ensure that the compression loading is quasi-static,
the CFRP honeycombs were first compressed in the H-direction at a
preloading displacement rate of 0.5 mm/min and then a constant
normal loading rate of 5 mm/min. On the other hand, the specimens in
all groups are crushed up to 80% of their original heights.
The crushing performance parameters of CFRP honeycomb speci-
mens are derived from the experimental force-displacement data. The
nominal compressive strains and stresses of the CFRP honeycomb spe-
cimens are calculated as ε = δ / H and σ = F / A , respectively [17,23],
where δ is the crush displacement, H is the height of the honeycomb
specimens (i.e., 40, 60 and 80 mm), F is the crushing force and A is the
original cross-section area of the honeycomb specimens (i.e., 80
×80 mm2). The total energy absorption (EA) is calculated from the area
under the force displacement curve as follows
b
EA = ∫ F . dδ
a (1)
where a = 0, and b is 80% of the specimen height. The specific energy
absorption (SEA) is the ratio of total energy absorption to specimen
weight (m) as follows
EA
SEA =
m (2)
The crush force efficiency (CFE) is the ratio of mean crushing force
(MCF) to the peak crushing force (PCF) that can be calculated as follow
b
1 gressive deformation of the honeycomb structures.
MCF =
b−a
∫ F . dδ
a (3)
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MCF
CFE =
PCF (4)
The higher values of SEA are desired that means higher energy
absorption efficiency of the structure [43]. Similarly, if the CFE is high
(i.e., close to 1), it indicates that the crushing energy is absorbed effi-
ciently due to high EA and low PCF [44].
3. Results and discussion
The typical experimental crushing test stages of a CFRP honeycomb
specimen are shown in Fig. 4. As observed from Fig. 4, when the
honeycomb specimen is subjected to an out-of-plane compressive load,
all cell walls are equally loaded and the failure typically begins with the
localized buckling of laminated sheets.
In order to check the repeatability of the experimental results, six
tests were conducted on each honeycomb group under identical test
conditions. Thus, the crushing tests of 162 specimens were performed
in this study. Representative force-displacement curve for different
honeycomb specimens are shown in Fig. 5. As seen from Fig. 5, the
force-displacement curves have very similar trends for each honeycomb
group. At this point, the average values of the six experimental tests
were considered to compare crushing performance of the CFRP hon-
eycomb specimens.
The typical force-displacement and nominal stress-strain responses
of CFRP specimens are seen in Fig. 6. From Fig. 6, it is clear that the
force-displacement and nominal stress-strain curves of specimens gen-
erally exhibit a brittle appearance. At this point, the crushing forces of
all specimens rise rapidly during the elastic loading phase before
reaching the first initial buckling force values. After this phase, the
crush forces drop rapidly for the most of specimens having square and
circular cell geometries due to the fact that these specimens have only
weak edge contacts or limited bonding surfaces between corrugated
sheets (e.g., see Fig. 1). In contrast, the force and nominal stress in
hexagonal specimens do not drop rapidly following these values due to
the fact that these specimens have more sides and several double foil
surfaces, which improve the stability and strength after the first col-
lapse. Later, the force and stress reach a plateau, and then the force and
stress remain almost constant or gradually increase with further
crushing depending on the geometric configuration due to the pro-
The discrepancies among the force and stress curves in Fig. 6 in-
dicate that the cell geometry, wall thickness and height may
L. Pehlivan, C. Baykasoğlu Composites Part B 162 (2019) 653–661

Fig. 4. A typical experimental test of a CFRP specimen.

significantly affect the responses of honeycomb structures during

Fig. 5. Typical force-displacement curves of different specimens.
compressive loading. As seen from Fig. 6, the first and progressive
crushing forces of the square, circular and hexagonal honeycomb spe-
cimen groups significantly increase with the increment in the cell wall
thickness since it enhances the buckling resistance of cell walls and
delays the plastic deformation; this improvement also provides a con-
siderable increase in crushing strength of the structures as seen in the
figure. On the other hand, the effects of instability in specimens after
collapse are reduced and, thus the load-carrying capabilities of hon-
eycomb specimens improve significantly with increasing cell wall
thicknesses. The crushing force and strength of hexagonal specimens
groups are generally higher than those of the square and circular ones
due to the fact that the hexagonal specimens contain several double foil
bolding surfaces that are different from those of the square and circular
specimens. Note that, the square specimens have only edge bonding and
the circular specimens contain small double foil bonding surfaces be-
tween corrugated sheets; thus, the mentioned bonds between corru-
gated sheets break easily under the compressive loading compared to
those of hexagonal specimens. Similarly, the hexagonal specimens al-
most preserve all their stability during the whole crushing period
compared to other specimens due to their superior in-plane and out-of-
plane mechanical properties. As observed from Fig. 6, the core height is
a relatively insignificant parameter on the overall crushing behavior for
the most of honeycomb specimen types. Especially, the cell height has
negligible effects on the compressive responses of square specimens due
to their weak edge type bonds between corrugated sheets. It is clear that
the cell height has notable effect on the crushing response of the hex-
agonal honeycomb specimens compared with the square and circular
specimens due to the fact that increments in cell height increase the
total bonding surface areas between corrugated sheets, which increase
the shear strength, buckling and bending resistances of these structures.
In addition, increasing the cell height also preserves a longer load
plateau before densification takes place and improve the load-carrying
performance all of specimen groups. Considering all of the above-
mentioned issues, the honeycomb specimen having the cell thickness of
0.75 mm and height of 80 mm shows the best compressive strength
performance compared with all other specimen groups.
One of the potential applications of the CFRP honeycomb structures
is energy absorption structures and systems [5,6,22]. For the case of
CFRP honeycombs having higher densities, overall higher structural
strength effect could be achieved; however, these structures may lose
their weight efficiency. Thus, the appropriate selection of honeycomb
parameters is critical to achieve higher energy absorption and weight
efficiency in practical lightweight structure design. Hence, the crushing
performance parameters (i.e., EA, SEA, MCF, PCF, CFE and nominal
strength) of the proposed structures were calculated and compared for
27 specimen groups. The crushing performance parameters of all hon-
eycomb groups are given in Figs. 7 and 8. It should be noted that the

657
L. Pehlivan, C. Baykasoğlu
Fig. 6. The force-displacement and nominal stress-strain responses of the CFRP specimens.
crushing properties of CFRP honeycomb specimens usually have a
variation ±5% from the mean values presented in Fig. 7; thus, the
standard deviations were not illustrated in the figure. The weights and
densities of specimens are in the range of 40.44–143.35 g and
156.28–282.05 kg/m3, respectively. Note that the weights and densities
of the square, circular and hexagonal specimens are very close and
hexagonal specimens are a little heavier than the other specimens
mainly due to their high bonding surface area as seen from Fig. 8.
It is clear from Fig. 7, the EA and SEA values all of specimens in-
crease with an increase in the cell wall thickness that is expected. As
observed from Fig. 7, the effect of cell wall thickness on the SEA of
specimens is not linear. Namely, the SEA values of CFRP structures
could be increased more than 5 times as the cell wall thickness in-
creases from 0.25 to 0.75 mm. On the other hand, the cell wall thickness
is a very effective parameter to increase the SEA of square specimens
compared with those of the circular and hexagonal ones. As shown in
Fig. 7, the hexagonal specimens have the highest SEA value while the
square specimens have the lowest SEA value. In particular, based on
almost the equal mass basis, the hexagonal CFRP specimens have up to
45% and 130% higher SEA value than the circular and square ones,
respectively. The results showed that the energy absorption capabilities
of square and circular specimens are relatively less sensitive to the cell
height compared to the hexagonal ones. In addition, the influence of
cell height on the energy absorption performance increase as wall
thickness increases. Note that increment in the cell height provides to
obtain a longer plateau before the densification phase and this issue
contributes to the improvement of EA and SEA of the specimens.
Namely, the SEA value of the hexagonal specimens could be increased
up to 46% by increasing their cell height. Note that the MCF depends
directly on the amount of total energy absorption. Hence, the effects of
cell geometry, wall thickness and height on the MCF are very similar to
the effects of these parameters on the EA and SEA as clear from Fig. 7.
The PCF and CFE values are also important parameters to observe
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Composites Part B 162 (2019) 653–661
the performance of the honeycomb structures during crushing. The CFE
indicates the uniformity of force-displacement curve and large CFE
means that the energy is dissipated more efficiently due to high MCF
and low PCF. As observed from Fig. 7, the PCF values of all specimens
significantly increase as the cell wall thickness increases. The PCF of the
hexagonal and circular specimens are considerably higher than those of
the square specimens, indicating that the hexagonal and circular CFRP
specimens provide a higher buckling resistance under compressive
loading. As seen from Fig. 7, specimens having thicker cell walls have
generally higher CFE values. On the other hand, only hexagonal spe-
cimens have higher CFE values for the whole thickness range. In par-
ticular, the hexagonal CFRP specimens having 0.25 mm thickness of
0.25 mm show up to 154% and 91% higher CFE than the circular and
square ones on almost the equal mass basis, respectively.
The measured out-of-plane compressive strength of the proposed
CFRP specimens in the present study are also compared with several
cellular materials (e.g., composite pyramidal lattices, aluminum lat-
tices, Nomex honeycombs, metal foams, polymer foams and carbon
fiber honeycombs) in the Ashby material strength versus density map
[15,23,25,28,29], e.g., see Fig. 8. Note that, the hexagonal, square and
circular CFRP honeycomb specimens are respectively represented as
solid hexagons, squares and circles with different colors. As clear from
Fig. 8, the compressive strength to density ratios of these CFRP struc-
tures are considerably higher than those of several cellular structures
and materials, and the measured values are placed on the upper right
region of the carbon fiber honeycomb elliptical domain. The out-of-
plane compressive strength of hexagonal and circular specimens are
significantly higher than those of the square specimens due to their
higher in-plane shear, buckling and bending resistances. In addition,
the circular specimens generally show higher strength compared with
the hexagonal ones at lower densities due to their higher buckling re-
sistance as shown in Fig. 6.
L. Pehlivan, C. Baykasoğlu
Fig. 7. Comparison of the crash performance parameters of CFRP specimens.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, the compressive response of CFRP honeycombs with
various cell configurations was investigated under quasi-static loading.
At this point, a total 27 groups of CRFP specimens were first fabricated
by corrugation technique and then, they were experimentally tested to
examine the influence of cell geometry, cell wall thickness and cell
height on the compressive response of honeycomb structures. The
corresponding specimen groups having different cell geometries (i.e.,
square, circular, and hexagonal) were designed to have almost the same
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Composites Part B 162 (2019) 653–661
weight. The experimental test results revealed that these CFRP honey-
comb designs could be particularly advantageous in applications where
the high strength, high-energy absorption and low weight combinations
are desired. Namely, the out-of-plane compressive strength (i.e.,
5.25–61.08 MPa) and specific energy absorption capacities (i.e.,
16.59–161.73 J/gr) of these CFRP honeycomb designs with the den-
sities of 157–282 kg/m3 were found superior than those of several
cellular materials. The results also showed that the crushing perfor-
mances of these CFRP honeycombs could be significantly increased on
almost the equal mass basis with the appropriate selection of
L. Pehlivan, C. Baykasoğlu
Fig. 8. The compressive strength versus density map for engineering materials [15,23,25,28,29], including the measured properties of CFRP honeycombs in the
current study.
corrugated pattern and cell parameters. It is observed that the core
height is a relatively insignificant parameter on the overall crushing
behavior of honeycomb designs compared with the cell geometry and
cell thickness parameters. In particular, the hexagonal honeycomb
specimens generally show superior compressive performance compared
to the square and circular specimens due to their larger double foil
bonding surfaces, thereby their superior shear and bending resistances.
On the other hand, the square honeycomb specimens have lower
crushing performance compared with the circular and hexagonal ones
due to their edge type contact designs. Note that, the square honeycomb
core designs having only edge contacts between corrugated sheets were
considered in designs to consider the lowest possible compressive
strength limits of these CFRP honeycomb structures. At this point, the
compressive responses of square honeycomb designs could be sig-
nificantly improved by using half-square corrugated sheet design si-
milar to those of hexagonal counterparts. In future, finite element
method based numerical models will be developed to study crushing
optimization of the CFRP honeycomb structures by considering more
design parameters. In addition, the crushing performances of CFRP
honeycombs filled structures will be investigated under different
loading conditions.
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding
agencies or company.
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