Bending deformation of honeycomb consisting of regular hexagonal cells

In this study, the flexural rigidity of a honeycomb consisting of regular hexagonal cells is investigated. It is found that the bending deformation of the honeycomb cannot be evaluated by using the equivalent elastic moduli obtained from the in-plane deformation since the moments acting on inclined walls of honeycomb cell are different for the in-plane deformation and bending deformation. Based on the fact that the inclined wall of the honeycomb is twisted under the condition that the rotation angle in both connection edges is zero in bending deformation, a theoretical technique for calculating the honeycomb flexural rigidity is proposed. In the theoretical analysis, a torsion problem of a thin plate was solved by using the generalized variational principle. The validity of the present analysis is demonstrated by numerical results obtained by the finite element method.