Crushing behaviour of aluminium honeycombs under impact loading

Understanding the crushing behaviour of honeycombs under dynamic loading is useful for crash simulations of vehicles and for design of impacting energy absorbers. Available experimental techniques, however, are not always able to provide satisfactory precision for tests on honeycombs under impact loading. This paper presents a new application of the Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) for testing honeycombs. Viscoelastic bars are used to improve the accuracy of measurements, and a generalised two-strain measurement method is applied to obtain a sufficient measurable maximum crush (up to 80%). Original experimental data (especially in the in-plane crushing directions) under impact loading are then reported. Differences between quasi-static and dynamic results are discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.