Out-of-Plane compressive performance of a novel bio-inspired honeycomb with sinusoidal rib: integrated theoretical and numerical analysis

• New bionic honeycomb structure outperforms traditional in crashworthiness. • Sinusoidal rib amplitude at T/4 optimizes material performance. • Thickness increase elevates crashworthiness of the new structure. • Introduced predictive model consistent with numerical results. Honeycomb materials are widely adopted in aerospace and automotive industries due to their lightweight nature and high strength-to-weight ratio. Inspired by the natural cuttlefish, a novel bionic honeycomb structure is devised by adding inner tubes and sinusoidal ribs to the traditional hexagonal honeycomb. The novel design’s crashworthiness was systematically evaluated using numerical simulations and theoretical analysis methods. The research results revealed that the crashworthiness of the new bionic honeycomb structure surpasses that of the traditional hexagonal honeycomb under the same thickness. It is noted that the performance of the material is more fully utilized when the amplitude of the sinusoidal rib is closer to a quarter of the period (T/4). Additionally, an increase in the structure's thickness correspondingly elevates its crashworthiness. In summary, based on the simplified super folding element theory, we introduced a predictive theoretical model for the crushing force of the novel bionic honeycomb structure. The theoretical prediction model shows excellent consistency with the numerical results.