Combined Compression-Shear Behavior of Aluminum Honeycombs

Abstract

Aluminum honeycombs are lightweight and have good energy absorption capability. They are widely used in industrial products and also as core materials in various fields of engineering such as aerospace, automotive and naval engineering because of their high specific strengths and they can undergo large plastic deformation to absorb high impact energy. In the applications of aluminum honeycombs they are not only subjected to pure compressive or indentation load but sometime also under combined compression-shear load. The mechanical response and crushing behavior under combined compression-shear loading condition is still limited in literature. In this paper, quasi-static out-of-plane combined compression-shear tests were conducted to study the deformation mechanism of different types of HEXCELL® aluminum honeycombs with different cell sizes and wall thicknesses. Three types of aluminum honeycombs were used in this study. A universal MTS machine with specially designed fixtures was employed in the quasi-static loading tests. The experiments were conducted at three different loading angles, that is, 30°, 45° and 60° and in TL and TW (T is out-of-plane direction and L, W are the two in-plane directions) plane orientation loading directions of aluminum honeycomb. The effects of different loading angle and different plane orientation are reported in this experimental study. Similarly, the effects of cell size and cell wall thickness were also analyzed.