Study influence of honeycomb structural parameters on impact force responses using reduced order modelling

Abstract

An electric vehicle is heavier than an internal combustion engine vehicle due to batteries and its enclosure. Weight reduction is one of electric vehicle design target. Honeycomb material can be used in the battery enclosure design as it has light weight and good energy absorption capability. However, it is necessary to understand the mechanical behaviour of honeycomb under impact load. This paper aims to study the effects of honeycomb cell size and wall thickness under impact loading on energy absorption and weight using a reduced order model. The reduced order model was established from a set of finite element simulation data. The prediction capability of the reduced order model was accurate with less than 5 % error. It was employed to predict the initial peak force, the mean force and mass of honeycomb with various sets of the cell size and wall thickness. The study observed that the initial peak force increased linearly with both cell size and wall thickness. For a very thin wall thickness the cell size had little effect. However, with a very small cell size, the effect of wall thickness on the initial peak force was little when comparing with honeycomb with a large cell size. The mean force also increased with increasing cell size at a decreasing rate for the same thickness. Once the maximum mean force was reached, the mean force decreased with increasing cell size for all thickness. However, for all cell size, the mean force increased parabolically with the wall thickness. The mass linearly increased with increasing cell size and the wall thickness. Then, the optimum parameter was suggested 5 mm cell size and 0.1 mm thickness which gave the lowest initial peak force with highest mean force and lightest mass.