Honeycomb Enhanced Self-Locked Structure for Energy Absorption

The self-locked structures are expandable, detachable, and easy to transport. When under impact loading, their self-locked effects can prevent the lateral splashing of themselves without any outer constraints, thus such structures have great potential for energy absorbing and protection in some emergencies. However, the low specific energy absorption (EA) of the existing self-locked structures has limited their application. In this work, self-locked structures with honeycombs fillings are proposed to improve their EA capacity. The deformed configurations and EA performance of self-locked structures with and without honeycombs fillings were investigated by experimental and numerical methods. It is found that self-locked structures with honeycombs fillings not only inherit the self-locked effect of existing self-locked structures, but also their load-carrying capacity is greatly improved, and the special EA capacity of the proposed structures is higher than any of the existing self-locked structures. This work provides a guideline for the design of the self-locked structure with both lightweight and high mechanical performance, and it is instructive for the design of other structures with both functional and mechanical properties.