Cushioning and Energy Absorbing Property of Combined Aluminum Honeycomb

Aluminum honeycomb is a good energy‐absorption material because of its high strength and low density. To estimate the buffering and energy absorbing capacity of aluminum honeycomb, we designed and tested a cylindrical cushioning structure with two types of aluminum honeycomb. In the experiments, the out‐of‐plane crushing behavior of aluminum honeycombs was investigated on three types of samples including single honeycomb sample, stacked samples with two honeycombs, and three honeycombs at a fixed quasi‐static loading condition. The results show that the energy‐absorbing capacity of combined honeycomb sample is slightly better than that of the single honeycomb sample with the same total thickness in the concerned range. However, the collapse stress will significantly increase when two specimens with approximately the same thickness insert into each other completely, which should be avoided in the cushioning design. The design of combined honeycomb consisted of three stacked honeycombs can obtain a relatively smooth stress state, which is beneficial to protect the cylinder. As a result, one can draw a conclusion that combined honeycomb buffer consisted of multi‐layered honeycomb samples should be given priority in the optimization design of aluminum honeycomb buffer.