Indentation resistance of the re-entrant

hexagonal honeycombs with negative

poisson’s ratio
L. L. Hu* and H. Deng
The influences of the cell-wall angle on the indentation resistance of the re-entrant hexagonal
honeycombs with negative Poisson’s ratio are studied by employing both the numerical tests
and the theoretical analysis. In the numerical tests, two groups of honeycombs are investigated,
i.e. the same-density group and the same-cell-wall group. It is shown that the honeycomb’s
indentation resistance increases with the cell-wall angle in the same-density group, while the
cell-wall angle plays a minor role in the same-cell-wall group. The theoretical analysis is
employed to explain the phenomena. The effect of the negative Poison’s ratio is calculated to
increase with the cell-wall angle. The average stress of the re-entrant honeycomb during
compression is deduced as a function of the cell-wall angle and the cell-wall size or the
honeycomb’s relative density. The analytical results are consistent with the numerical tests and
give an explanation for the phenomena in tests.
Keywords: Re-entrant honeycomb, Hexagonal, Negative poisson’s ratio, Indentation, Cell-wall angle

Introduction In the present paper, the indentation resistance of the

Normal materials expand laterally when they are com-
pressed along the axial direction. Auxetic materials
which have negative Poisson’s ratio are opposite: they
contract laterally when compressed along the axial direc-
tion on account of the special microstructures.1 Lots of
microstructures can lead to negative Poisson’s ratio.
One of the classic types is re-entrant hexagonal honey-
combs, the hexagonal cells of which have two concave
angles, as shown in Fig. 1. The auxetic material is
expected to some advantages, such as large shear resist-
ance, hardness improvement, lower fatigue crack propa-
gation, and so on.1
Much work was reported on the Poisson’s ratio and the
elastic properties of the auxetic cellular material based on
the small deformation of the cell structures.2 Wan et al.3
built a large deflection model to analyse the negative
Poisson’s ratio of the re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs,
in which the cell-wall material is assumed to be elastic
and no plastic is considered. The local indentation of iso-
tropic auxetic materials was investigated in the conti-
nuum mechanics viewpoint with regardless of the
material’s microstructure, showing great dependence of
the indentation resistance of the auxetic material on the
material’s Poisson’s ratio.4
Department of Applied Mechanics and Engineering, School of
Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, 510275 Guangzhou, P.R. China
*Corresponding author, email hulingl@mail.sysu.edu.cn
re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs with negative
Poisson’s ratio is studied by both numerical tests and
theoretical analysis. The plastic behaviours of the cell
walls are considered during the large deformation
process of the cells. The cell-wall angle on the indentation
resistance of the re-entrant honeycombs is discussed.
Numerical tests
Re-entrant honeycomb
The re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs with negative
Poisson’s ratio are built by employing the software
ANSYS/LS-DYNA, as shown in Fig. 1. The size of the
honeycomb blocks are about 875 mm × 640 mm with
more than 1000 cells included. The out-of-plane thickness
of the re-entrant honeycomb b = 1 mm. To ensure the
honeycomb’s cells can be completely compressed, the
length of the horizontal edge h and that of the bevel
edge l of the cells, as marked in Fig. 1b, have to satisfy
the condition of h/l ≥ 2. Here, we choose h/l = 2.1 and
l = 10 mm. The angle between the bevel edge and the
horizontal edge of the cell is defined as the cell-wall
angle θ0 , as marked in Fig. 1b. By changing the cell-
wall angle θ0 , five types of re-entrant honeycombs are
obtained with θ0 being equal to 30, 45, 60, 75 and 80°,
respectively.
The density is one of the most important parameters in
affecting the mechanical properties of cellular materials,
thus the comparison among different cellular materials
is usually based on the same density. On the other
hand, in the production process, a more direct method

© W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2015

Received 1 October 2014; accepted 18 December 2014
S1-442 DOI 10.1179/1432891715Z.0000000001588 Materials Research Innovations 2015 VOL 19 SUPPL 1
 Hu and Deng Indentation resistance of the re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs with negative poisson’s ratio

1 Re-entrant hexagonal honeycomb: a numerical model, b representative cell

is to change only the honeycomb’s cell-wall angle while the re-entrant honeycombs in the same-density group.
remaining the wall’s size unchanged. Thus two groups The re-entrant honeycomb with larger cell-wall angle
of honeycombs are studied: a group with the same shows stronger indentation resistance, as shown in
density and a group with the same cell wall. The honey- Fig. 2a. The force increases with the cell-wall angle,
combs in the first group possess the same relative while the indentation depth decreases with it. In contrast,
density ρr = ρ∗ /ρs = 0 · 167, where ρ∗ and ρs are the the indentation load curves of the re-entrant honeycombs
density of the honeycomb and the base material, respect- are hardly influenced by the cell-wall angle in the same-
ively. The cell-wall thickness t in the same-density group is cell-wall group, as shown in Fig. 2b. It is reported in the
calculated according to Equation (1)3 to be 0·50, 0·80, literature that the serious negative Poisson’s ratio of the
1·13, 1·44, and 1·54 for the honeycombs with the cell- material will lead to stronger indentation resistance.4
wall angle 30, 45, 60, 75 and 80°, respectively. Regard to the re-entrant honeycombs, the Poisson’s
ratio is determined by the cell-wall angle, as discussed
∗ t/l(h/l + 2) in the following section. To further understand the
ρr = ρρ = (1)
s 2 sin θ0 (h/l−cosθ0 ) phenomena obtained in the numerical simulations as
shown in Fig. 2, theoretical analysis is done in the follow-
The honeycombs in the second group possess the same ing section.
cell-wall thickness t of 0·8 mm, but possess different
density. Their relative density is 0·391, 0·167, 0·163,
0·092, and 0·086 for the honeycombs with the cell-wall
angle 30, 45, 60, 75 and 80°, respectively.
The honeycomb is indented dynamically by a rigid ball
with the radius 126 mm along the negative direction of y,
as shown in Fig. 1a. The initial indentation velocity of the
ball is 10 m s−1 with the impacting kinetic energy 58·4 J.
The friction between the honeycombs and the impacting
ball is ignored. The honeycomb is fixed on the bottom
side. Symmetric constraints are set on the left boundaries
of the honeycombs. The out-of-plane displacement of the
honeycomb is constrained so as to prevent the specimen
from out-of plane bulking. Shell element is adopted to
mesh the cell walls. The material of the indenter is
chosen to be mild steel with the Young’s modulus
210 GPa and the density 7800 kg m−3. The cell-wall
material of the honeycomb is assumed to be elastic, per-
fectly plastic with the Young’s modulus E = 68 GPa,
Poisson’s ratio υ = 0·3, the density ρs = 2700 kg m3 and
the yield stress σ Y = 255MPa. The element of shell 163
is used to mesh the honeycombs’ cell walls. The element
size is set as 1 mm. Thus there are 10 or 21 elements in
each cell wall.

Numerical results
The force suffered by the rigid ball during indentation 2 Variety of the indentation force with the indentation
process is plotted in Fig. 2. It is shown that the cell-wall displacement: a the same-density group. b the same-cell-
angle significantly affects the indentation resistance of wall group

Materials Research Innovations 2015 VOL 19 SUPPL 1 S1-443

Hu and Deng Indentation resistance of the re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs with negative poisson’s ratio

Theoretical analysis obtained to be

The representative cell of the re-entrant honeycomb is
F
t 2 σY
shown in Fig. 1b. When the cell is compressed along the σ= = (5)
y direction, it is assumed that the cells symmetrically Lb l 2cosθ(h/l − cos θ)
deformed, as schemed with the dotted line in Fig. 1b.
The cell walls are assumed not bend or fold during the During the whole compression process of the representa-
compression. And the work done by the indentation tive cell from the initial instant with εy = 0 to the densifi-
force is dissipated by the plastic hinges occurring in the cation instant with εy = 1, the average stress suffered by
corners of the re-entrant hexagonal cells. the representative cell, σ
, is then deduced based on
During the compression process, the Poisson’s ratio nyx Equation (5):
of the re-entrant honeycomb can be obtained according
1
to the cell’s configurations before and after deformation, σ
= ∫0 σdεy
respectively, 

σ Y (t/l)2 h/l + 1 θ0
= 
 2  arctan tan (6)
h/l − 1 2
εx sin θ0 cos θ0 − cos(θ0 − Δθ) sin θ0 h/l −1
υyx =− = · (2)
εy h/l − cos θ0 sin θ0 − sin (θ0 − Δθ)
Combining the relationship between the cell-wall thick-
ness and the honeycomb’s relative density, as shown in
where, Δθ is the change of the cell-wall angle from the
Equation (1), Equation (6) can also be written in the
initial angle, θ0 , as marked in Fig. 1b.
form of relative density
The dependence of the Poisson’s ratio of the re-entrant
honeycombs with various cell-wall angles on the com-
pressed strain is compared in Fig. 3. It is shown that the 4σ Y (ρ∗ /ρs )2 (h/l − cos θ0 )2 sin θ0
σ
=  2 
 2 
absolute value of the honeycomb’s Poison’s ratio h/l + 2 h/l −1
decreases during the compression process. The re- (7)
entrant honeycomb with larger cell-wall angle possess 

larger values of the negative Poisson’s ratio.
For the representative cell as shown in Fig. 1b, there are
six plastic hinges to dissipate the energy done by the exter-
nal force. At a certain instant during the compression
process with the cell-wall angle equal to θ, the force suf-
fered by the cell, F, can be obtained accordingly
8Mp σ Y bt2 dθ
F = lim = · lim
dH0 dH l dθ0 sin θ − sin (θ − dθ)
σ Y bt2
= (3)
l cos θ
where, Mp = (1/4)σ Y bt2 is the fully plastic bending
moment of the cell walls, dH and dθ is the instant
change of the cell’s height and the cell-wall angle, respect-
ively, at the instant.
The instant wide of the representative cell during com-
pression, L, is
L = 2h − 2l cos θ (4)
Thus the instant stress of the representative cell, σ, is
h/l + 1 θ0
arctan tan
h/l − 1 2
By substituting the values of the parameters used in the
numerical tests into Equations (6) and (7), respectively,
i.e. h/l = 2.1, ρ∗ /ρs = 0·167 for the same-density group,
and t/l = 0·08 for the same-cell-wall group, the depen-
dence of the honeycomb’s average stress on the cell-wall
angle is exhibited in Fig. 4 for the two group of honey-
combs. It is shown that the honeycomb’s stress increases
rapidly with the cell-wall angle for the same-density
group, while the cell-wall angle has little influence on it
for the same-cell-wall group. It is coincident with the
dependence of the honeycomb’s indentation resistant on
the cell-wall angle of the honeycomb obtained in the
numerical tests, as shown in Fig. 2.
Recalling the relationship of the honeycomb’s Poison’s
ratio with the cell-wall angle, as shown in Equation (2)
and Fig. 3, larger cell-wall angle means larger values
of the negative Poisson’s ratio of the re-entrant honey-
comb. Thus both the numerical tests and the theoretical
analysis in the present paper show that Poison’s ratio
does not always determine the indentation resistance of
the re-entrance honeycomb, which is different from the
results analysed in the continuous viewpoint.4 For

3 Variety of honeycomb’s Poisson’s ratio 4 Dependence of honeycomb’s stress on cell-wall angle

S1-444 Materials Research Innovations 2015 VOL 19 SUPPL 1

 Hu and Deng Indentation resistance of the re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs with negative poisson’s ratio
cellular material, the relative density is one of the most
important factors in determining the mechanical proper-
ties.5 In the same-cell-wall group, the re-entrant honey-
comb with larger cell-wall angle has smaller density,
which weakens the load capacity of the honeycomb.
On the other hand, the effect of negative Poisson’s
ratio is more obvious for the re-entrant honeycomb
with larger cell-wall angle, which will stronger the honey-
comb. Thus, the two effects of density and negative
Poisson’s ratio are counteracted in the same-cell-wall
group, resulting in the little influence of the cell-wall
angle on the indentation resistance of the re-entrant
honeycombs.
The effect of the cell-wall angle on the in-plane crush-
ing behaviour of the traditional hexagonal honeycombs
was studied in reference.6 There are some similar
results obtained between the traditional hexagonal hon-
eycombs and the re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs.
For both kinds of honeycombs in the same-density
groups, the closer to 90° the angle between the inclined
edge and the horizontal edge is, the higher the
honeycomb’s bearing capacity is. However, in the
same-cell-wall groups, the crushing strength of the tra-
ditional hexagonal honeycombs depends on the cell-
wall angle, while the cell-wall angle has little influence
on the indentation resistance of the re-entrant
honeycombs.
Conclusions
Both the numerical tests and the theoretical analysis are
carried out to study the influence of the cell-wall angle
on the indentation resistance of the re-entrant honey-
combs with negative Poison’s ratio. It is shown that the
honeycomb’s indentation resistance increases with the
cell-wall angel when the honeycomb’s density remaining
unchanged. It can be regarded as the contribution of
the effect of the negative Poison’s ratio, since the absolute
value of the honeycomb’s Poison’s ratio increases with the
cell-wall angle. However, for the honeycombs with the
same cell-wall thickness but different density, the cell-
wall angle has little influence on the honeycomb’s inden-
tation resistance, which is the counteracted result between
the effect of the negative Poisson’s ratio and the honey-
comb’s density according to Equations (6) and (7).
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the support from the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under grant nos. 11472314
and 11172335.
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Materials Research Innovations 2015 VOL 19 SUPPL 1 S1-445