2017 8th International Conference on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Edgewise Compression Behavior of Honeycomb Sandwich Structures

Cheng Qiu, Zhidong Guan, Zengshan Li Kailun Wang

School of Aeronautic Science and Engineering Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute
Beihang University China COMAC
Beijing, China Shanghai, China
e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract—An analytical solution and numerical models are structures with periodic media [7-9]. Failure in honeycomb,
proposed for the buckling and post-buckling behavior of hexagonal solids in general, is due to a bifurcation instability
honeycomb sandwich structures under edgewise compression. initiated at the local level. Analytical solutions have been
General buckling and core crushing due to transverse shear obtained by utilizing linearized von Kármán plate theory
are observed in the experiment. Based on these phenomena, combined with Bloch wave representation theorem for the
the von Kármán plate theory are employed for the analysis for honeycomb under axial compression combined with
the buckling behavior and the analytical solution for the core transverse shear [10, 11].
under transverse shear are obtained for predicting the failure Following the motivation of this work in Section 1, the
of the sandwich structures. Comparison between these
critical (i.e. onset of the bucking-type instability) load, the
solutions and the experiments shows that the imperfection of
pre-bending deformation significantly affects the ultimate load post-buckling behavior of sandwich structures and the crush
for the sandwich structures, resulting the failure before the of honeycomb sandwich structures are analyzed here.
compression reaches the critical load for general buckling. Experiments have been conducted over sandwich structures
Moreover, parameters such as core geometries, asymmetry with different parameters such as face sheet thickness, core
face sheets are under discussions for the load carrying capacity height and unit cell geometries. General buckling occurs for
of the specimens. all the test scenarios and the eigenmode can be shown by the
strain value of the gaging point distributed on the face sheet.
Keywords-component; honeycmb; buckling; imperfection; Analytical solutions are obtained by utilizing the plate theory
stability for the critical load and eigenmode for sandwich structures
under edgewise compression in Section 3 and the results are
I. INTRODUCTION compared with FE models and experiments. The critical
The very high stiffness-to-weight ratio and outstanding transverse shear strain, determined by adopting the Bloch
energy absorption characteristics make the wide utilization wave representation theorem, combined with FE models for
of honeycomb sandwich structures [1]. Applications such as the post-buckling response of the sandwich structures are
aircraft wings, automobile tails, helicopter rotor blades taken account for the crushing behavior and the ultimate load
involve compressive loading either in-plane or out-of-plane. of the structures as presented in Section 4. Results are
Of particular interest here are the edgewise compression discussed in Section 5 to analyze the influence of the
behavior of sandwich panels, where the honeycomb serves as geometries on the load carry capacity of sandwich structures.
core between two flat plates of CFRP composite. Finally, Section 6 ends the paper with some conclusions.
For the honeycomb sandwich structures with different
cell geometries and face sheet thickness, different buckling II. EXPERIMENT
mode may occur due to different load distribution with
A. Material Preparation
edgewise compression applied. General buckling and Face
wrinkling are the main buckling mode of the honeycomb The specimen configuration is shown in Fig. 1. The
sandwich structures [2]. Some researchers focus on the face distribution of strain gauge is presented in Fig. 1(b).
wrinkling mode and provide analytical solutions combined The face sheet of the sandwich structures is made of
with Finite Element (FE) models [3, 4]. With the face sheet composite T300/BA9913 and the NRH type aramid
thickness increasing, the general buckling mode begin to honeycomb is used for the core material. Four kinds of
dominate according to the numerical research [5]. sandwich geometries including face sheet thickness, core
In understanding the behavior of sandwich structures density and height are tested here as shown in Table 1, which
especially in the elastic range of the mechanical response, the is four groups (AFT/AET/AFS/BFT).
honeycomb core is often regarded as homogeneous solid The composite layup for type A is [45o/-45o/0o/90o/0o/-
with orthotropic elastic properties [6]. Effective elastic 45 /45o], while type B with a upper layup [45o/-45o/0o/0o/-
o

properties are required for the determining of the buckling 45o/45o] and a lower layup [45o/-45o/0o/90o/0o/90o/0o/-
behavior of the sandwich structures. A computational 45o/45o].
homogenization method has been found to be a powerful The experiment set-up is illustrated in Fig. 2. Sandwich
technique to predict the effective elastic properties of structures are loaded with a fixture on two sides to guarantee

978-1-5386-3306-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 85

the clamped boundary conditions and the unconstrained eigenmode of the sandwich structures under edgewise
lateral expansion. All the specimens are tested with a rate of compression, which will be discussed later in Section 3.
0.5mm/min. After the bifurcation happens, the strains of that 1/4 position
area remain the consistency until the ultimate load is reached
TABLE I. GEOMETRIES FOR FACE SHEET AND HONEYCOMB CORE following by the sudden failure, which suggest that the
Face sheet thickness / Core density / Core height / eigenmode remains unchanged as the load increases during
mm kg/m3 mm the post-buckling process. The ultimate load is very close to
Value 0.875/0.875 1.125/0.75 32 48 3 6 the critical load for buckling.
Symbol A B E F S T

(a)

Figure 3. Strain gauge output along the load direction

(a)

(b)
Figure 1. Specimen geometry

(b)

(c)
Figure 2. Fixture for the edgewise compression test
Figure 4. Failure mode and process of the specimen

B. Phenomena A photograph of the failed specimens of the four group is

The compression test failure is similar for all the shown in Fig. 4(a), while the failure process is recorded by
specimens. Some bending deformations happen before the high-speed camera as illustrated in Fig. 4(b). For all the
sudden failure as the bifurcation for the strain gauge output specimens, damage under edgewise compression locates near
resulting from the bending deformation is shown in Fig. 3. the 1/4 position of the test section length. The detailed
As shown in Fig. 3, the strains of upper and lower face sheet pictures of the damage position show that the honeycomb
are almost the same before the bifurcation happens. And then, core near the damage area crushes involving 3~5 unit cells,
divergence can be seen for the strains of the center region of while the composite panels remain intact.
the sandwich panels, while the consistency remains for the To conclude, there are three major characteristics for the
strains of other gaging point, which is 1/4 position of the test examined specimens under edgewise compression:
section length (L=300mm). As the bifurcation is due to the x Damage position locates near the 1/4 of the test
bending deformation, the strain gauge output indicates the section length.

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x Honeycomb core crushes near the damage area while For the onset of instability in the axially and transversely
the composite face sheet remain undamaged. loaded thin wall honeycomb cores, the buckling happens in
x The buckling eigenmode remains unchanged during the elastic range of the honeycomb wall’s response [10].
the post-buckling process. Therefore, the effective elastic properties of the honeycomb
structures are of great concern. Here, a computational
III. BUCKLING AND POST-BUCKLING BEHAVIOR homogeneous technique is used to calculate the elastic
response of honeycomb core based on the author’s previous
A. General Buckling Behavior of Sandwich Panels work [9]. The results are listed in Table 2.

TABLE II. EFFECTIVE ELASTIC PROPERTIES FOR HONEYCOMB CORE

Core E11/MPa E22/MPa E33/MPa G12/MPa G13/MPa G23/MPa
NRH-2-48 0.55 0.55 133.7 0.11 47.2 28.5
NRH-3-32 0.16 0.16 77.6 0.03 34.7 17.2

Under the assumption of the perfect bond between face The von Kármán plate theory dictates the partial
sheet and honeycomb core, the equivalent bending stiffness differential equation for the out-of-plane eigenmode
of the sandwich structures shown in Fig. 1 can be determined component w ,
by (1) and (2). (1) is for sandwich structures having same
upper and lower panels (with a thickness f) while (2) is for M Dκ (7)
those having asymmetry panels (with thickness f1 and f2). In the middle surface of the plate,
3 2
bc c 2 1
( EI )eq Ec ˜ E f b ˜ (cf 2 f f 3) (1) H y |y (V y QV x ) 0 (8)
12 2 3 0
E
bf13 f bf 3 From (7) and (8), we can get
( EI )ceq Ef1 ˜ E f 1bf1 ˜ ( y 1 )2 E f 2 2
12 2 12
w2 w
f E bc3 c | y 0 =0 (9)
E f 2bf 2 ( y f1 c 2 )2 c Ec bc( y f1 )2 (2) wy 2
2 12 2
Now that for the boundary condition of the free lateral
In (2), expansion, the following equation can be acquired for the
E f1 f12 2 E f2 f 2 ( f1 c f 2 / 2) 2 Ec c( f1 c / 2) whole domain of the plate
y (3)
E f1 f1 E f2 f 2 Ec c w2 w w2 w
= Q (10)
Fig. 5 shows the bending problem of a thin plate. The wy 2 wx 2
bending moment is expressed as
The Poisson’s ratio of composite laminate face sheet is
ª h / 2 V zdz º very low (<0.05). As the exact solution for the partial
ªM x º « ³ h / 2 x » differential equation (7) is trigonometric series (Bloch wave
«M » « h/ 2 » representation theorem is used in Ref [10]), (10) indicates
M « y» « ³ h / 2 V y zdz » (4)
that the wave length along y-axis is much longer than that
«¬ M z »¼ « h/ 2 »
« ³ W zdz » along x-axis. Therefore, we assuming that the out-of-plane
¬ h/ 2 ¼ displacement w remains constant along y-axis.
Bending stiffness Then, (7) transforms into

ª1 Q º Eh3 w2 w
Eh 3 Mx ˜ ( ) (11)
D « Q 1 » (5) 12(1 Q 2 ) wx 2
2 « »
12(1 Q )
«¬ (1 Q ) / 2 »¼ For the sandwich structures with equivalent bending
The curvature stiffness, the critical load and eigenmodes for buckling
behavior can be obtained as
ª w2 w º
« 2 » 4S 2 ( EI )eq
wx »
ªN x º « Fcr 2
l˄Q 2)
(12)
«N » w »
« w 2
κ « »y « » (6)
wy 2 » 2S
«¬N z »¼ « w A ˜ (1 cos x) (13)
« w2 w » l
« 2 »
¬« wxwy ¼»

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much smaller. Therefore, in the next subsection, the pre-
bending will be taken into account as imperfection.
B. Post-Buckling Behavior Considering Imperfections
As stated in the last subsection, the calculated critical
load is inaccurate for the actual compression test, while the
eigenmode agrees with the stain gauge output. Based on
these phenomena, pre-bending deformation B is introduced
having the same function shape as eigenmode represented by
(a) (b) (13). Thus,
Figure 5. Schematic of a thin plate bending problem 2S
w* B ˜ (1 cos x) (14)
l
with the extra pre-bending deformation, the total out-of-
plane displacement is w w* .
Here, FE models are used to study the post-buckling
response of the sandwich structures. The pre-bending
deformation is introduced in Abaqus software as geometry
imperfection. The FE models and the extra pre-bending
Figure 6. Eigenmode represented by (13)
deformation are illustrated in Fig. 7.
Fig. 8 shows the relation between the force and the
Here, A represents the amplitude of the deflection w
maximum out-of-plane displacement A at different extra pre-
when the bifurcation happens. The eigenmode of the plate is
bending deformations B for the AFT category.
illustrated in Fig. 6. It can be seen that the curvature of the
Nonlinear relation between the compress load and the
plate reaches zero at the L/4 position which agrees with the
out-of-plane displacement is shown in Fig. 8 as the stiffness
strain gauge output shown in Fig. 3 as the equality between
of the structure gradually decreases with increasing bending
strains of upper and lower face sheet at that area keeps while
this balance breaks for L/2 position. deformation. The initial bending stiffness is higher for the
Four numerical cases are utilized to check the accuracy sandwich plates with less imperfections, which also having
of the (12) in calculating the critical load. The results are the greater load carrying capacity as the excessive
shown in Table 3. The four cases are as follows deformation for the honeycomb core results in its failure as
presented in the next sub-section.
(a) case1: E f 900 , Ec 100 , f 2 , c 6
(b) case2: E f 300 , Ec 300 , f 2 , c 6
(c) case3: E f 900 , Ec 100 , f 4 , c 2
(d) case4: E f 400 , Ec 200 , f 4 , c 2
The results listed in Table 3 are the ratio against result in
case 1. It can be seen that critical loads acquired by (12)
agrees well with those by FEM which validates its accuracy
for the calculation of sandwich structures.
TABLE III. CRITICAL LOAD FOR THE FOUR NUMERICAL CASES Figure 7. FE model and the pre-defined bending deformation for post-
buckling analysis
Case FEM /Case 1 Equation (12) /Case 1
1 1.00 1.12
2 0.46 0.48
3 1.27 1.38
4 0.60 0.63

TABLE IV. COMPARISON OF CRITICAL LOAD BETWEEN EXPERIMENT AND

CALCULATION
Category Experiment / kN Calculation/ kN
AFT 25.47 33.18
AET 22.03 32.13
AFS 13.44 24.13
BFT 25.00 35.19

The calculating critical load and the experiment results

which indicates the onset of bifurcation are listed in Table 4.
The Comparison shows that this calculation is inappropriate
for determining the critical load as the experiment value is Figure 8. Load vs. out-of-plane displacement with imperfections

88
IV. BUCKLING OF HEXAGONAL HONEYCOMB
Owing to its low in-plane stiffness, the honeycomb core
carries little in-plane load as the composite face sheet have
high modulus for in-plane tensile, compression and shear.
The failure of honeycomb core mainly results from axial
compression and transverse shear as shown in the failure
criteria put forward by Besant [12]
2 2 2
§ V 33 · § V 23 · § V 31 ·
¨ ¸ ¨ ¸ ¨ ¸ t1 (15)
© S33 ¹ © S23 ¹ © S31 ¹ Figure 9. The single RVE cell for honeycomb core

The crushing of honeycomb structures is complicated but

the onset of bifurcation under transverse shear is relatively
much easier as all the work can be done within the elastic
range of honeycomb wall given by the experimental results
[11]. Base on this facts, the analytical solutions can be
acquired by using the linearized von Kármán plate theory on
the single RVE (representative volume element) for
honeycomb structures, as shown in Fig. 9.
In the case of transverse shear strain of an infinite strip
with clamped boundary conditions, the critical shear strain is
obtained by Timoshenko and Gere [13]

S 2t 2
J strip
c
=1.498 ˜ ( ) (16)
(1 Q )h2
Here, t is the cell wall thickness, v is Poisson’s ratio and Figure 10. Maximum transverse shear strain of honeycomb core vs. stress
at different imperfections
h is the height for the honeycomb core.
Based on this results, the critical transverse shear strain Ignore the shear load on the composite face sheet, the
needs to be modified as [10]: shear strain of the honeycomb is calculated as
(1) The equal rotation of all plates joined along a
common line is equivalent to a simply supported boundary Fs F ª 2S 2S x º
J= ˜ sin «( A B) ˜ sin (19)
l »¼
condition for each plate.
kG ˜ b ˜ c kGbc ¬ l
(2) The RVE for honeycomb core has an isotropic section
because some vertical walls have double thickness as a result where k=5/6 is the equivalent coefficient for the rectangular
of its manufacturing process. section.
Jiménez, López, and Triantafyllidis given their analytical Fig. 10 shows the curve of the maximum transverse shear
solution for the critical load and corresponding eigenmodes strain and the force at different pre-bending deformations for
using a Bloch wave representation of the eigenmode for the AFT category. The critical shear strain obtained by (17)
different rectangular and hexagonal geometries under axial is presented as a reference.
compression combined with transverse shear. From the Failure compress stress can be obtained in Fig. 10 at the
analytical results, we can get the critical strain for the intersection of the plotted curve and the reference line of
transverse shear without axial compression as critical transverse strain.
Nonlinear relations can also be found in Fig. 10 as the
S 2t 2 shear strain increases sharply after the linear stage. The
Jc J strip
c
˜ (1.15)=1.723 ˜ ( ) (17)
(1 Q )h2 ultimate stress grows larger with less imperfection.
It can be seen that with a pre-bending deformation
The critical transverse strain expressed in (17) is used as 2S
a reference to determine the ultimate load of the sandwich w* B ˜ (1 cos x) , the failure stress for the sandwich
structures later. l
As mentioned in last section, the inserted imperfection plate is 20.21MPa, which is close to the ultimate load 21.9
has the same shape as the eigenmode presented in Fig. 6 and MPa of the tested specimens. Based on this result, we can
find that the imperfections cause failure of the structures in
the total out-of-plane displacement is w w . The shear
*
advance of the general buckling.
force in cross section of the sandwich plate is
V. DISCUSSION
ª 2S 2S x º
Fs F ˜ sin T F ˜ sin «( A B) ˜ sin (18) In the previous sections, the analytical solutions for the
¬ l l »¼ honeycomb core under transverse shear and the load

89
conditions of the sandwich cross sections considering the with (b) that honeycomb core with smaller height can bear
pre-bending deformations are introduced for determining the bigger shear deformation.
failure of the edgewise compression loading case. In this 2) Core density
section, we will review the results and find out the influence In the test specimens, honeycomb cores with two kinds
of some parameters on the load carrying capacity of of core density are considered, i.e. the NRH-2-48 type (AFT,
honeycomb sandwich structures. BFT, AFS) and the NRH-3-32 type (AET).
The core density also affects the edgewise compression
A. Geometric Imperfection
behavior in two ways:
It has been shown in Fig. 8 and Fig. 10 that the failure (a) The equivalent bending stiffness of the sandwich
loads of the structures are significantly influenced by the structures increases with larger core density
geometric imperfections, especially for the honeycomb (b) The critical transverse shear strain increases with
sandwich structures whose core can be easily distorted by larger core density.
excessive shear deformation.

Figure 12. critical stress for different width

Both the two points improve the load carrying capacity

Figure 11. Load-displacement of the test specimens
of the sandwich structures. The bending stiffness increases
With the imperfections, the nonlinear occurs between the as the core with higher density shows larger in-plane moduli.
force and displacement and the stiffness reduces gradually, The higher density indicates larger wall thickness and thus
thus resulting bigger strain and lower ultimate load compared results in larger critical shear strain.
to the critical load calculated in Section 2. It can be seen that results in group AFT is bigger than
Therefore, it is recommended that the pre-bending the group AET. But the difference is smaller than that
deformations be taken into consideration for the compressed between AFT and AFS.
honeycomb sandwich structures. 3) Asymmetry face sheet
In the test specimens, sandwich structures with two kinds
B. Core Geometries of face sheet are considered, i.e. the symmetry face (AFT,
1) Core height c AET, AFS) and the asymmetry face (BFT).
In the test specimens, honeycomb cores with two kinds The asymmetry causes different bending stiffness
of height are considered, i.e. c=6 (AFT, AET, BFT) and c=3 accoding to (1) and (2) as the bending stiffness of the
(AFS). sandwich structures with asymmetry face sheets is slightly
The core height affects the edgewise compression bigger than that with symmetry face sheets. The
behavior in two ways: experimental results show that the ultimate load of group
(a) The equivalent bending stiffness of the sandwich BFT is 5% bigger than that of AFT.
structures increases with larger core height. However, we take a closer look at the layup of the two
(b) The critical transverse shear strain decreases with group. It can been seen that specimens of group BFT have
larger core height. an extra 0o ply compared with layup in AFT. If we remove
It can be seen from the (1) and (2) that the bending that extra ply, the effective bending stiffness drop for about
stiffness is proportional to the core height. The bigger 6%. Therefore, in these geometrical conditions, little
bending stiffness results in larger critical load. And this is difference is caused by the asymmetry of the composite face
verified by the larger failure load of group AFT against sheet.
group AFS. And we can find out that this is the most C. Poisson’s Effect
significant difference among all the parameters.
The load-displacement curves of the four groups are It has been mentioned in Section 3 that for we assuming
illustrated in Fig. 11. It shows that unlike other groups, that the out-of-plane displacement w remains constant along
specimens of group AFS undergo bigger displacement after y-axis. It’s an approximate hypothesis based on the fact that
buckling to the final failure. And this phenomenon agrees the is very small Poisson’s ration for composite laminate

90
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