Effective In-Plane Elastic Modulus of a Periodic Regular Hexagonal Honeycomb Core with Thick Walls

Abstract

The effective in-plane elastic moduli of different types of honeycomb cores with thick walls are studied using analytical and numerical approaches. Analytical equations derived in this paper take a proposed jointed rectangle into consideration. The analytical results under plane stress and plane strain conditions are also obtained. The effective in-plane elastic moduli are studied as a function of their own relative densities because of the different methods of describing the geometrical shapes of honeycomb cores. The results are quantitatively compared with the available experimental results in this paper. It indicates that the present model can better predict the elastic properties in x-direction but are less suitable in y-direction. The proposed jointed rectangle has significant effect at high relative density. Moreover, the effective in-plane modulus increases with the relative height of honeycomb cores because of the Poisson effect of the material, and the results under plane stress and plane strain conditions are the lower and upper bounds, respectively.