Review: 3D woven honeycomb composites

Honeycomb is considered an excellent structural material because of its high strength and shear rigidity, excellent energy absorbing property, high impact strength, lower weight, high crushing stress, and almost constant crushing force. Honeycomb being a cellular solid is a well-known core used to build a sandwich structure while making structural composites. Because of this excellent mechanical performance, honeycombs are frequently used in the aircraft industry as a core of sandwich panels and in the automotive industry as efficient impact attenuators. The hollow spaces in the honeycomb structure reduce weight but also ensure required strength, provided they are designed correctly. 3D woven honeycomb composite has a promising future in the lightweight application areas and can be the real substitutes for aluminum and other metal alloys as these structures provide structural integrity. In this review, the basic concept of textile-based 3D woven honeycomb composites, engineering design, manufacturing process, structure-properties relationship, and applications of 3D woven honeycomb fabrics and their composites are discussed in detail. Geometrical modeling of 3D woven honeycomb fabric and theoretical analysis of impact, flexural, and compression behavior of their composites are summarized to appreciate the potential advantages of textile-based honeycomb structural composites.