Out-of-plane impact analysis for a bioinspired sinusoidal honeycomb

The special energy-absorbing structure of beak protects the head of woodpecker from being hurt when pecking tree. Inspired by the micro wavy structure of the woodpecker beak, a novel bionic sinusoidal honeycomb is proposed and its crashworthiness performance is analyzed. Results show that the bionic sinusoidal honeycomb produces more folds than the conventional honeycomb under the same mass conditions, which greatly improves the energy absorption effect. Compared with the conventional honeycomb, although the initial peak crushing force of bionic sinusoidal honeycomb is generally higher (the change ranges from −1.64% to 11.84%), the specific energy absorption of all bionic sinusoidal honeycombs is much better (the increase ranges from 30.12% to 80.99%). Moreover, the bionic sinusoidal honeycomb has a better crush force efficiency when the amplitude is small. A comprehensive comparison of the impact resistance of the bionic sinusoidal honeycomb and conventional honeycomb shows that the proposed bionic sinusoidal honeycomb has better energy absorption and application scalability than the conventional honeycomb. HighlightsA novel bionic sinusoidal honeycomb (BSH) is proposed based on woodpecker beaksThe impact resistance of BSH is systematically studied using finite element analysis.Its specific energy absorption (SEA) can increase by 80.99% compared to conventional honeycomb.The SEA of BSH increases as the wall thickness increases, but it is weakly related to the amplitude and the wavenumber.