Two plateau characteristics of re-entrant auxetic honeycomb along concave direction

Abstract

Auxetic honeycombs usually feature a single plateau stress, which hinders their multifunctional applications. In this work, we aim at investigating the two plateau characteristics of re-entrant honeycomb (REH) with negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR) in the concave direction through experimental, numerical and theoretical methods. A series of REH prototypes with different geometric parameters were fabricated by utilizing the additive manufacture (AM) technique, and were tested under quasi-static crushing. It was found that due to the transitional rectangle structures formed during crushing, the REH specimens exhibit a two-step deformation mode and thus have two plateau stresses in the stress–strain curves. The second plateau stress of the baseline specimen is more than twice the first plateau stress. Both the numerical and the theoretical predictions agree well with the experimental results. Detailed parameter analysis showed that larger cell wall thickness, smaller straight wall length and smaller inclined angle lead to larger first and second plateau stresses. In addition, the effect of crushing velocity on the crushing behavior of the REH was discussed. Under dynamic crushing, no critical strain is found to divide the first and second plateau stages, and the two plateau characteristics disappear. This study may provide guidelines for the design of multifunctional honeycombs with two plateau stages.