PhD Thesis Topic:

Instability and Failure Mechanisms of Honeycomb

under Mechanical and Thermal Loading

Honeycomb structures play a major role in many technological applications (aerospace,

automotive, packaging etc.) due to their low weight and high stiffness. Understanding their
deformation mechanisms is a challenging problem in mechanics.

Of particular interest here is the onset and evolution of deformation mechanisms in

honeycomb of various geometric configurations (hexagonal, reinforced etc.) under axial loading
at different temperatures. As it can be seen in the pictures below, the failure mechanism is
strongly influenced by temperature, since the glue (necessary to bond the metallic sheets forming
the honeycomb) properties change with temperature.

room temperature, short wavelength high temperature, long wavelength failure mode
failure mode

Modeling crushing mechanisms for these materials involves several steps: The onset of failure
mechanisms determine the initial instability mode that triggers the failure, which starts as a
diffuse deformation mode that subsequently localizes. Of specific interest here is the failure of
honeycombs under axial (along the generator direction) loading at different temperatures. Bloch
wave calculation techniques can determine the critical mode corresponding to the first instability
and symmetry arguments can be used for subsequent failure mode calculations. Also of interest
is the influence of unit cell geometry and material properties on the failure of these materials.

Keywords: Mechanics, Instability, Buckling processes, Numerical Methods, Finite Element

Methods, Metal Plasticity, Energy Absorption

Thesis supervision: Dirk Mohr and Nicolas Triantafyllidis

Applications including the CV in pdf format should be sent to mohr@lms.polytechnique.fr