Energy absorption of pre-folded honeycomb under in-plane dynamic loading

Honeycomb structures have been extensively employed as energy absorption devices. This paper proposes a kind of energy absorption structure known as the pre-folded honeycomb, which is made from conventional honeycomb with a pre-folded trace. The folding mode and energy absorption performance of the pre-folded structure under in-plane impact load were investigated both numerically and experimentally. Furthermore, the response surface method was chosen to find the optimal pre-folded honeycomb structure for the purpose of maximizing the specific energy absorption. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in solving crashworthiness design-optimization problems. Additionally, the numerical results show that the in-plane structural strength of pre-folded honeycomb is nearly 8 times higher than that of conventional honeycomb.