High angle compressive behavior of aluminum honeycomb structures under normal and combined normal–shear loading

This study analyzes the mechanical behavior of an aluminum honeycomb structures subjected to compression, comparing the conditions of pure normal stress and combined normal–shear stress up to 45° load application angle. The analysis was conducted considering three loading configurations: pure compression (0° loading angle respect to the normal axis) and combined compression with shear components (25° and 45°). The different deformation modes were examined as a function of the load application angles. The evolution of mechanical strength, densification strain, and absorbed energy was evaluated from the total stress–strain curves as a function of the load application angle and direction (TL, longitudinal and TW, transversal as shown in Fig. 7). The results indicate that at 0° and 45° load application angle the peak stress (ranging from 1 to 2 MPa) is evident while at 25° it is not present. As the load application angle increases the deformation proceeds with lower stress values. Both peak stress and plateau stress reach lower values while for the strain an opposite behavior has been evidenced. A similar decreasing trend was observed for the specific absorbed energy in both loading directions (TL and TW) with an increasing load angle, ranging from 0.95 to 1.51 J/cm3. Compressive behavior of honeycomb structure at increasing load application angles. The specific absorbed energy progressively decreases at higher load application angles. The increment in the load application angle tends to shift the stress-strain curves downward and to the right.