Pehlivan, Levent; Baykasoğlu, Cengiz

The in-plane crushing behavior and energy absorption performance of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) honeycombs with different core topologies were experimentally investigated under uniaxial loading conditions. Three types of CFRP honeycomb core topologies (i.e. circular, square and hexagonal) with different cell wall thicknesses and heights were considered in the designs. The honeycomb samples were fabricated by the molding and bonding process, which is widely used in the easy, fast and economical manufacturing of thin-walled honeycomb structures. A total of twenty-seven sample groups were experimentally tested for each loading condition, in which honeycomb samples with different core topologies were designed to have almost the same weights for a meaningful comparison. The experimental results revealed that all honeycomb designs have higher in-plane compression strength in the expansion direction, and hexagonal honeycombs showed the highest strength and energy absorption performance in both directions due to their stable load-carrying capacity and outstanding force efficiency. In particular, the experimental findings showed that the crushing strength and the specific energy absorption of CFRP honeycomb structures can be improved up to 6.1 and 4.2 times, respectively, by properly adjusting the cell wall thickness and height parameters. The results also revealed that the proposed lightweight CFRP honeycombs with the structural densities of 155–283 kg/m3 showed better in-plane crushing performance than many competing cellular topologies.

Pehlivan, Levent; Baykasoğlu, Cengiz

The experimental investigation on the compressive response of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) honeycombs with various cell configurations was carried out in the present work. The CFRP honeycomb specimens were manufactured by corrugation technique, in which the prepreg CFRP sheets were first corrugated into the certain shape using corrugated aluminum moulds under heat and pressure, and then the corrugated CFRP sheets were glued and stacked to construct honeycomb specimens. Twenty-seven groups of specimens were experimentally 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/m 3 could be increased more than two times with the appropriate selection of cell configurations.