Deformation Mode and Energy Absorption of Modularized Cellular Structures

Compared with the traditional integrated structures, modularized cellular structures can meet the assembly requirements more flexibly. The deformation modes and energy absorption were studied to provide new ideas for the application of cellular structures in engineering, the regular hexagon with positive Poisson’s ratio effect and the re-entrant hexagon with negative Poisson’s ratio effect were selected as the infill units of the modularized cellular structures in this paper, and eight kinds of structures were designed for quasi-static compression experiments. The experimental results were in good agreement with the simulation results. The cellular structures with different infill approaches had different deformation modes under the compression experiments, in which the regular hexagon infill units showed obvious shear failure bands, and the alternate infill approaches can maintain the original units shape. The peak force of the two-layer infill cellular structures were greater than the three-layer infill structures, and the specific absorption energy were greater than the corresponding three-layer infill structures. The total absorption energy, average compression force and specific absorption energy of the hexagon infill structures were always the smallest among the four infill approaches, while the total absorption energy and average compression force of the re-entrant hexagon infill structures were always the largest and the specific absorption energy was kept at a stable and high level.