Honey comb/hexagonal

structures
Lecture 4

https://i0.wp.com/sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/CCD.jpg
Key concepts to be addressed today
•Hexagonal structures in nature
•Packing advantage of hexagonal structures
•How do honey bees make hexagonal cells ?
•Engineering application of honey comb structures
 1. Hexagonal structures in nature
Honey bee hive – hexagonal cells

They use the

cells to store
honey and
pollen to feed
the young ones

http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/why-nature-prefers-hexagons
 Compound eyes of Insects Hexagonal lens

Insect eyes can contain thousands of lenses that direct light toward a photoreceptive rhabdom. A) Close-up photograph of a
robber fly showing the regular arrangement of facet lenses. Reproduced under the terms of the CC-BY license. [355a]
Copyright 2005, Opo Terser. B) Close-up SEM of a few facet lenses highlighting the hexagonal shape, scale bar: 10 µm. C,D)
Schematic drawing of apposition (C) and superposition (D) eyes. Reproduced with permission. [355b] Copyright 2017, the
Royal Society.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Insect-eyes-can-contain-thousands-of-lenses-that-direct-light-toward-a-photoreceptive_fig12_323649911
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Structure-of-the-compound-eye-of-a-fly_fig4_330215545
 Plant cells of a moss, Plagiomnium affine

https://www.123rf.com/photo_18688110_pomegranate-fruits-isolated-on-w
https://www.quora.com/What-common-objects-are-shaped-like-hexagons hite-background-close-up-.html
Developing fruit on Monstera deliciosa, Swiss
https://www.123rf.com/profile_evaash?mediapopup=12718850
cheese plant

https://gardendrum.com/2017/07/25/monster-swiss-cheese-plant-in-search-of-black-holes/
 Is there any other example that you
think have hexagonal shapes ?

Diamondback
terrapin (aquatic
turtles)

https://teknocraticrev.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/1683167_com_wikimediac.jpg
2. What is common to these examples, besides them being hexagonal ?

•All are structures associated with packing

•Packing honey and pollen, retinas, cells and
fruits
 Packing Problem

Is essentially a Minmax problem

How can we maximize packing of a

commodity while minimizing the cost of
packing ?
Packing
density is the
proportion of
the surface
covered by a
given shape.

The commonly accepted

estimate for the packing
density of circles in the
hexagonal lattice is 0.7405,
or 74.05%.

How do you arrive at packing density ?

Among these
the packing
densities are
the same

But why is
that nature
has selected
hexagons over
squares and
triangles ?
Packing Efficiency

What is the area packed or covered to the perimeter of the shape ?

 2 2 2
Area = s (✔3/4)s {(3✔3)/2}s
23.4 mm2
Side = 4.837 mm 7.35 mm 3.00 mm
Total side
19.348 mm 22.05 mm 18.00 mm
(perimeter)=

Area/Perimeter = 1.209 1.061 1.300

Let us take an area of 100 x 100
mm or 10,000 square
millimeter, mm2

Given size of each cell = 23.4

sq. mm
The number of cells that
could be formed in that is =
428 Total length of the equalteral
Since there are 428 cells of equilateral triangles = 3 (triangle has 3
triangles, each side of the triangle is sides) x 7.35mm * (428 cells ÷ 2)
shared by two. Therefore to get the =4718.7mm or 471.87cm
total length, we will have to divide it
by 2
Total length of squares while making
allowance for two squares that share same
side = 4 (sides of a square) x 4.837 x (428 ÷ 2) =
4140.472mm = 414.047cm

Total length of the hexagon= 6 (sides of a

hexagon) x 3mm x (428 ÷ 2) = 3852mm=
385.2cm
Take away: For the same area

22.50 % 7.48 % More cost of packing

will be involved
compared to when
packed with hexagons
Honeybee
conjecture
Around 2000 years ago (36
BC), a Roman citizen, Marcus
Terentius Varro:

The most efficient way a

planar surface could be The old conjecture is now a theorem as it
covered in unit area size is was proved to be right in 1999 by the
through division into American mathematician, Thomas Hales
hexagons. This hypothesis is
known as the honeybee
conjecture.
https://steemit.com/stemng/@greenrun/hexagon-in-nature-why-is-the-honeycomb-hexagonal
Why is this important to the bees?
Making beeswax is an "expensive" affair for the
bees. For every one ounce of wax the bees
produced, it will have to consume eight ounces of
honey!

The housing of nectar and honey is an efficient

work. The cells made of beeswax is made by
young bees using a high-energy substance which
involves loads of nectar. Efficiency is critical as it
ensures there is no waste of resources that they
need to produce the structure (honeycomb).
Honeycombs are made from beeswax, a
substance created by worker bees.
When the temperature is right, worker bees
secrete wax scales from special glands in their
body.
The beeswax composition is: hydrocarbons (12%–16%)
with a predominant chain length of C27–C33, mainly
heptacosane, nonacosane, hentriacontane, pentacosane
and tricosane [10]; free fatty acids (12%–14%), with a
chain length of C24–C32 [11]; free fatty alcohols

Then they chew the wax with a bit of honey and

pollen to produce the beeswax.

The hexagonal cells serve as storage vessels for

honey, as well as homes to raise young bees.
https://bees4life.org/blog/beekeeping/8-honey-bee-species
 Apis dorsata

Apis cerana

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Honeycomb
3. How do bees make the hexagonal cells ?

Figure 1. Italian honeybee (Apis mellifera Ligustica) comb cell at

(a) ‘birth’, and at (b) 2-days old, scale bar is 2 mm

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2013.0299
 Hypothesis
• Hexagons result automatically
from the pressure of each bee
trying to enlarge as much as
possible each cell

• Surface tension that molds the soft

wax into a hexagonal pattern of
cells (requires that wax becomes
molten due to bee’s temperature)

So is it a result of blind physical forces rather than

biological engineering ?
 http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/why-nature-prefers-hexagons

Soap bubbles, on their own, tend to minimize their surface area by

forming spheres. If packed together, as in a foam, they again
adopt minimal surface shapes, predominantly hexagonal.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-hexagonal-and-circular-cells
Giant Causeway in Ireland – basalt outcrops in Snow flakes
hexagonal shape

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/nature/hexagon-ab https://www.countrylife.co.uk/nature/hexagon-abo
ounds-in-the-natural-world-153183 unds-in-the-natural-world-153183
 Discovered only in 1982 by the
Voyager mission, ‘the hexagon’, is a
cloud pattern around the north pole
of Saturn.

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/nature/hexagon-abounds-in-the-natural-world-153183
• However bees do not heat up wax to the temperatures needed for
the wax to reach the liquid equilibrium and so there should be
some mechanical shaping of cells by the bees.

"The ambient
temperature inside the
comb is just 25o C",
Stick-Nest Brown Paper Wasps -
Ropalidia revolutionalis
But regardless of the mechanism, hexagonal cells can be
obtained only if isodiametric circles are arranged in a
regular tightly packed array, with each circle
surrounded by six other same sized circles.

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CirclePacking.html
4. Strength of material of honey comb cell

The wax cell walls may be only about 0.05mm thick, each cell can support 25
times its own weight
Honeycomb can be as much as 40 times stronger than laminates in
certain scenarios, for instance, and often offers better
weight-to-strength ratios. Also, load carry and load transference are
much greater in honeycomb than in laminate
5. Applications (Prof. Anand)

Today honeycomb structures have numerous

engineering and scientific applications, including in
the aerospace industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brw0X4VKqqM
https://www.politicalfunda.com/2022/12/sandwich-structures-in-aircraft-sandwich-structure-material-and-uses.html
5. Applications (Prof. Anand)

Today honeycomb structures have numerous

engineering and scientific applications, including in
the aerospace industry.
Summary
• Honey comb structures abound in nature and have been a source of a
great intrigue – even today

• Undoubtedly they offer the best packing problem solution in area and
volume compared to any other regular polygons.

• Their unique structure has been a source of inspiration to generations

of engineers specializing in honeycomb structures
Additional reading
Nazzi, F. The hexagonal shape of the honeycomb cells depends on the construction behavior of
bees. Sci Rep 6, 28341 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep28341

Zhang, Qiancheng, Xiaohu Yang, Peng Li, Guoyou Huang, Shangsheng Feng, Cheng Shen, Bin Han et al.
"Bioinspired engineering of honeycomb structure–Using nature to inspire human innovation." Progress
in Materials Science 74 (2015): 332-400.

Karihaloo, B. L., Zhang, K. & Wang, J. J. R. Soc. Interface http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2013.0299 (2013).

https://www.theguardian.com/science/1999/aug/26/technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagon
Assignment questions
• Discuss using physical principles the emergence of hexagonal cells in
soap bubbles (Hint: based on minimal surface energy)
• From a mechanical engineering perspective, discuss how stress and
strain would be withstood by a regular polygon of shape, square,
triangle and hexagon.
• What are some of the applications that you think (besides what you
have learned in the class) that might be fashioned after the
honeycomb structure/
• What is the sum of the interior angles made in a hexagonal cell and
how does this compare with a circle, square and an equilateral
triangle. Discuss the implication.
Hands on
1. If you have an opportunity, say from a market near you, or from a
discarded hive (do not venture near an active honey bee nest),
measure the a) the length of the sides of the hexagonal cells, b)
compute the area and estimate the coefficient of variation. To do the
latter you have to measure at least 50 individual cells in a single hive.
2. If you do not have access to the market samples, download a nice
image of a hive from the web and do the exercise.
3.Repeat exercise (1) with any man-made hexagonal structure (this
again can be downloaded from the web).
4. Compare the results obtained from (1) and (2) with (3) and discuss.