Bio-inspired self-similar hierarchical honeycombs are multifunctional cellular topologies used for resisting various loadings. However, the crushing behavior under large plastic deformation is still unknown. This paper investigates the in-plane compressive response of selective laser melting (SLM) fabricated hierarchical honeycombs. The effects of hierarchical order, relative density as well as constituent material are evaluated. The results show that at small deformation, the AlSi10Mg alloy hierarchical honeycombs show great advantages over the elastic modulus and compressive strength than 316L steel hierarchical honeycombs. As the relative density and hierarchical order increase, the failure mechanism of AlSi10Mg alloy honeycombs gradually changes from a bending-dominated mode to a fracture-dominated mode; whereas all the 316L steel honeycombs fail due to the distortion of original unit cells. At large deformation, the AlSi10Mg alloy honeycombs behave with brittle responses, while the 316L steel honeycombs exhibit ductile responses, showing a negative Poisson's ratio behavior and gradient deformation of hierarchical unit cells. The addition of unit cell refinements improves the elastic modulus of AlSi10Mg alloy honeycombs and advances the densification of 316L steel honeycombs. In addition, the effect of constituent material on the compressive response of hierarchical honeycombs has been discussed. This study facilitates the development and future potential application of multifunctional ultra-light sandwich structures.
Keywords: constituent material effect; deformation mode; failure mechanism; in-plane response; structural hierarchy.