B.R. Isanaka, T. Mukhopadhyay, R.K. Varma et al.

Acta Materialia 239 (2022) 118226

Table 3
The details of failure stress, percentage increase after strengthening and effective Young’s modulus of regular and strength-
ened honeycomb lattices (refer to Table 1 for nomenclature).

Model Yield Stress (MPa) Normalized Stress Percentage increase Effective Young’s
modulus of lattice
(MPa)

RH 0.5549 0.00999 – 55.52

SFB_10 0.5629 0.01014 1.44 55.52
SFB_25 0.5701 0.01027 2.75 55.52
SFB_50 0.5665 0.01020 2.09 55.52
SFB_100 0.5658 0.01019 1.96 55.52
SFB_150 0.5637 0.01015 1.02 55.52
SFB_100_20 0.5646 0.01091 9.16 51.75
SFB_100_30 0.5619 0.01136 13.71 49.44
G_30_20 0.5713 0.10271 3.00 55.52
G_30_20_10 0.5823 0.01049 4.94 55.52
G_30_20_10_5 0.5973 0.01076 7.65 55.52
G_30_20_10_5_E 0.6013 0.01083 8.37 55.52
G_30_20_10_5_DY 0.5782 0.01264 26.46 45.75
G_30_20_10_5_E_DY 0.5880 0.01285 28.59 45.58
Homogeneous 0.5856 0.01054 5.54 55.52
strengthening

We have also studied the effect of change in Young’s modu-
lus to locally strengthen the regular honeycomb lattice by allow-
ing more deformation before the failure. The decrease in the ma-
terial Young’s modulus and an increase in the material yield stress
property are applied simultaneously for the failure band (refer to
Fig. 7 and Table 1 for SFB_X_Y models). It is observed that the re-
duction in Young’s modulus for local strengthening at failure bands
causes a considerable increase in the yield stress with a maximum
decrease of 10.95% in the overall stiffness of the structure. A max-
imum increase of 13.71% is observed (refer to Table 3) in normal-
ized stress for the G_100_30 model, which is considerably more
when compared to SFB_25.
From the failure patterns of the strengthened configurations
discussed so far, it is observed that the X-band of failure appears
at the insection lines of the strengthened portion and the un-
strengthened portions due to stress concentration. Thus to avoid
and defer such failure patterns further, we propose to adopt graded
strengthening schemes as discussed here. Analysis based on the
graded strengthening schemes of Table 1 shows that a higher in-
crease in the yield stress can be achieved by applying the gra-
dation in the material yield stress with more number of grada-
tion bands. A confinement effect by providing strengthening along
the edges (i.e. configuration G_30_20_10_5_E) further improves the
failure properties. The graded honeycomb with a gradation scheme
of G_30_20_10_5_E (refer to Fig. 7 (f)) is observed to have a higher
yield stress value than the remaining graded honeycomb lattices
(refer to Table 3). There is an increase of 8.37% in yield stress ob-
served for this particular strengthened model. Considering the re-
sponse obtained from strengthened lattices by decreasing the ma-
terial Young’s modulus and an increase in the material yield stress
property (SFB_X_Y models), another design is also investigated by
reducing the Young’s modulus along with gradation in the material
yield stress and confinement. This causes a considerable increase
in the failure stress with a maximum decrease of 17.90% in the
overall stiffness of the structure in the case of G_30_20_10_5_E_DY.
Fig. 11(A) shows the failure patterns of the regular honeycomb and
different strengthened honeycomb configurations at a compressive
strain of 0.074 (i.e. strain at which X-band deformation is observed
for the regular honeycomb).
To make a fair comparison and put the advantages of local
strengthening into perspective, the honeycomb lattice is separately
strengthened by applying a homogeneous increase in the mate-
rial properties for the entire model irrespective of failure bands.
For the comparison, the weighted average is calculated for the
graded strengthened structure G_30_20_10_5_E (in which the max-
imum number of cells is considered for strengthening among all
the strengthening schemes mentioned in Table 1). This calcu-
lated weighted average is obtained as 7%, and the same percent-
age increase in material yield strength is considered for homoge-
neous strengthening. It is found that the homogeneous increase
has lesser influence on the yield stress (5.54%) compared with
G_30_20_10_5_E (8.37%). Further, consider the fact that with the
increase in intrinsic Young’s modulus and yield strengths of natural
materials, the density also increases proportionally. This leads to
the realization that the homogeneous strengthening scheme would
lead to a much heavier lattice (undesirable for most advanced en-
gineering applications) compared to the locally strengthened lat-
tice. Such outcomes reveal that the gradation based local strength-
ening scheme is more efficient than the homogeneous strengthen-
ing. Fig. 11(B) depicts the comparison of the stress-strain response
of the selected strengthened models for compression in the x1 di-
rection (the stress-strain response for all the strengthened models
are provided in the supplementary material).
Having the optimal strengthening schemes for x1 direc-
tion finalized, we further analyze the mechanical performance
of these strengthened configurations in the x2 direction. In
the x2 direction, four strengthening methods, namely SFB_25,
SFB_100_30, G_30_20_10_5, G_30_20_10_5_E, G_30_20_10_5_DY,
G_30_20_10_5_E_DY are selected based on the results in the x1 -
direction. The model G_30_20_10_5_E_DY is observed to outper-
form the other models and an increase of 37.54% in global yield
stress is noted. Similar to the x1 direction, the homogeneous
strengthening is found to be lesser efficient than the graded and
SFB_100_30 models (Table 4). Fig. 12 shows the failure bands
and comparison of normalized stress-strain responses of locally
strengthened honeycomb lattices and regular honeycomb in x2 di-
rection. Tables 3 and 4 demonstrate that the failure strength of
lattices can be significantly increased by the local strengthening
schemes with a minor change in the global stiffness (and effective
Young’s modulus).
Having the strength and stiffness properties analyzed corre-
sponding to different strengthening schemes, we further investi-
gate the influence of such local strengthening on energy absorption
capacity for both x1 and x2 directions. The strengthened models
exhibit a significant percentage increase in energy absorption ca-
pacity, as shown in Fig. S7 of supplementary materials. We have
calculated the energy based on the area of stress-strain curves
(and the derived force-displacement curves accordingly) and pre-

15
B.R. Isanaka, T. Mukhopadhyay, R.K. Varma et al.
Table 4
The details of yield stress, percentage increase after strengthening and effective Young’s modulus of regular and strength-
ened honeycomb lattices (refer to Table 1 for nomenclature).
Model Yield Stress (MPa)
RH 0.5667
SFB_25 0.5938
SFB_100_30 0.6397
G_30_20_10_5 0.6492
G_30_20_10_5_E 0.6511
G_30_20_10_5_DY 0.6367
G_30_20_10_5_E_DY 0.6398
Homogeneous 0.6043
strengthening
sented the results in terms of percentage increase with respect to
regular periodic configuration. Note that the calculated energy is
a function of the maximum strain energy considered in the ab-
scissa (19% strain). It reveals that the energy absorption is more
effective to gradation based strengthening schemes (G_30_20, G-
30_20_10, G_30_20_10_5_DY, G_30_20_10_5_E_DY) compared to a
single band strengthening scheme (SFB_X). Among the different
strengthened honeycomb lattices, G_30_20_10_5_E_DY shows the
maximum increase in energy absorption of 30.5% and 32.12% for
x1 and x2 directions, respectively. Thus the numerical results pre-
sented in this section along with the supporting discussions, in
general, convincingly demonstrate that failure strength and energy
absorption capacity of honeycomb lattices can be significantly in-
creased by adopting the machine learning identified local strength-
ening while keeping the relative density and stiffness almost unal-
tered.
6. Conclusions and perspective
This work proposes a machine learning-informed, failure
pattern-driven strength enhancement approach for honeycomb lat-
tices. A GPR-based machine learning model is developed first to ef-
ficiently identify the location of failure bands in hexagonal lattice
structures with elastoplastic material behavior, wherein the rela-
tive density and the material properties are accounted as input
parameters. While the GPR model is found to be reasonably ac-
curate compared to direct finite element simulations, noteworthy
is that the failure bands of honeycomb lattices can be predicted
with a high level of computational efficiency. Subsequently, a se-
quential local strengthening approach is proposed along the iden-
tified failure bands for enhancing the failure strength instead of
the traditional global strengthening of periodic lattices. The signif-
icant findings of the sequential local strengthening approach are
summarized below:
• The location and failure band patterns are significantly affected
by the adopted local strengthening approach.
• A decrease in Young’s modulus and simultaneous increase in
the material yield strength (SFB_X_Y models) locally along the
X-band provide higher failure strength when compared to the
original regular honeycomb lattices (RH) and SFB_X models.
• The graded schemes of local strengthening result in a higher
failure strength and higher energy absorption capacity com-
pared to the single band strengthening (SFB_X) under quasi-
static compressive loading for both x1 and x2 directions.
• It is revealed that the failure strength becomes noticeably
higher as the number of gradations increases to have lesser
stress concentration effects. The failure strength further in-
creases if a strengthening confinement effect is provided along
with the graded local strengthening.
Acta Materialia 239 (2022) 118226
Normalized Stress Percentage increase Effective Young’s
modulus of lattice
(MPa)
0.01072 – 52.85
0.01132 5.58 52.85
0.01355 20.90 47.20
0.01228 14.55 52.85
0.01232 14.89 52.85
0.01463 36.47 43.51
0.01475 37.54 43.38
0.01143 6.63 52.85
• The numerical results presented in this paper convincingly
demonstrate that failure strength and energy absorption ca-
pacity of honeycomb lattices can be significantly increased by
adopting the machine learning identified local strengthening
while keeping the relative density and stiffness almost unal-
tered.
• Among the SFB_X, SFB_X_Y and the graded strengthened mod-
els (including confinements), G_30_20_10_5_E_DY is observed
to have the highest percentage increase in failure stress of
28.59% and 37.54% for x1 and x2 directions, respectively.
Whereas in single band strenthend schemes, SFB_X_Y models
exhibit a maximum increase of 13.71% and 20.90% in x1 and x2
directions, respectively.
• The G_30_20_10_5_DY strengthened model exhibits the high-
est increase of energy absorption in both x1 and x2 directions
(30.5% in x1 direction and 32.12% in x2 direction) compared
with the regular honeycomb (RH).
While we have demonstrated the concept of machine learning-
assisted local strengthening considering hexagonal lattices, similar
concepts can be extended to other unit cell geometries. In gen-
eral, the following factors need to be considered for understand-
ing impact of the current hexagonal geometry. (a) The established
literature shows that the hexagonal shape lattice structures ex-
hibit higher energy absorption ability, specific strength and stiff-
ness with lesser cell wall material when compared with the other
geometries. Moreover, regular hexagonal tesselations are the most
efficient space-filling patterns with the least amount of material
usage. (b) Other derivatives of hexagonal lattices can be readily ob-
tained like rhombic and rectangular lattices as a special case of the
hexagonal geometry. Further, hexagonal shapes can have both aux-
etic and non-auxetic behavior depending of the unit cell geometry.
(c) Hexagonal lattice-like patterns are widely used in various nat-
urally occurring and artificial systems such as the core material of
sandwiched panels, flexible panels for bridge construction, sound
absorption, tissue engineering, microstructures of bones and dif-
ferent woods, nanostructures of 2D materials like graphene. Thus
the mechanical understanding concerning hexagonal lattices would
have a wide range of applicability.
In the present study, we did not include the buckling failure
mode. The observed failure mode in the presently reported lattice
structure is due to local yielding. For a more practical analysis, one
should carry out a separate buckling analysis to find out the critical
buckling stress of the lattice structure. Finally, the failure of the
lattice may be decided based on the minimum value of buckling
stress and the stress corresponding to yielding.
A range of modern structural applications demands for maxi-
mizing the failure strength and energy absorption capacity simul-
taneously with the minimum additional weight of material to the
structure. Conventional approaches of designing lattice microstruc-
16
B.R. Isanaka, T. Mukhopadhyay, R.K. Varma et al.
tural geometry have possibly reached to a saturation point, leading
to a strong rationale in this field to exploit the recent advances
in artificial intelligence and machine learning for further enhance-
ment in the mechanical performance of artificially engineered lat-
tice structures. To this end, we have proposed to strengthen the
lattice structure locally by identifying the failure pattern through
the emerging capabilities of machine learning. It can be noted in
this context that such complex spatially varying microstructures
can be physically realized based on the recent advances in multi-
material additive manufacturing. This paper convincingly demon-
strates the abilities of machine learning in material microstruc-
ture design through failure pattern-driven local strengthening for
increasing the failure strength and energy absorption capacity si-
multaneously, which would be critical to a range of advanced me-
chanical, civil and aerospace systems across different length scales.
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgments
VK would like to acknowledge the support from the Seed grant
and Ministry of Education. TM would like to acknowledge the sup-
port received through the Science and Engineering Research Board
(Grant no. SRG/2020/001398), India. The authors would like to ac-
knowledge Aanchna Sharma for GPR implementation in this study.
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be
found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2022.118226.
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