Effective Elastic Properties of Hierarchical Honeycombs with Corrugated Sandwich Walls

Hierarchical honeycombs with sandwich cell walls are classified as advanced honeycomb structures with enhanced mass-specific mechanical properties. In this paper, we present a hierarchical honeycomb composed of corrugated sandwich cell walls and investigate its effective elastic response in terms of the nine elastic constants of orthotropic materials. An analytical model is employed to predict the elastic constants, which has been previously utilized for similar honeycombs with sandwich walls of solid homogenous cores. Numerical predictions were obtained through a finite element-based homogenization technique and used to validate the analytical model predictions for a range of design parameters. Results indicate that the optimal design increases the in-plane stiffness by up to 350%, while a reduction of 20% occurs for the out-of-plane shear stiffness.