Numerical Investigation of Compression Behavior of Bio-Inspired Honeycomb Designs

This study numerically investigates the compressive behavior and energy absorption performance of bio-inspired honeycomb structures. A validated LS-DYNA finite element framework was first established for a regular hexagonal honeycomb and correlated with experimental results, showing good agreement in terms of force–strain response and deformation modes. Subsequently, seven bio-inspired configurations—spider, snail, wavy, bamboo, pomelo peel, grass stem, and hierarchical—were modeled under quasi-static compression. The results revealed that bio-inspired designs significantly influence deformation pathways and energy absorption capacity compared to the regular hexagon. Among the proposed designs, the pomelo peel, grass stem, and hierarchical honeycombs exhibited the highest specific energy absorption (7.88, 7.50, and 7.39 J/g, respectively), representing an improvement of up to 47% compared to the reference structure. This improvement is attributed to their multi-cell and hierarchical load-transfer mechanisms that delayed densification and ensured a prolonged plateau region. While spider and bamboo designs provided balanced performance with moderate specific energy absorption, the wavy and snail geometries demonstrated smoother plateau behavior with lower peak forces. Overall, the findings highlight that bio-inspired geometrical features can be effectively employed to enhance the crashworthiness of lightweight structures, offering valuable insights for future applications in transportation, packaging, and energy storage systems, and guiding the development of next-generation lightweight structural designs.