Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101

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Composite Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruct

Large deformation of an auxetic structure in tension: Experiments and finite MARK

element analysis
⁎
Jianjun Zhanga,b, Guoxing Lua, , Zhihua Wangb, Dong Ruana, Amer Alomaraha,
Yvonne Durandeta
a
Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
b
Institute of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The present paper reports on the post-yield behaviors of an auxetic structure, honeycomb with representative re-
Re-entrant hexagonal honeycomb entrant topology. Specimens were made of stainless steel and polymer, respectively. Quasi-static uniaxial tensile
Polymer and stainless steel tests were conducted in the two principal directions, followed by simulations using the commercial code –
Image correlation ABAQUS 6.11-2. The deformation, tensile stress-strain curves and Poisson’s ratio were of interest. A good
Poisson’s ratio
agreement was observed between the numerical simulations and the experimental results. Subsequently, the
Finite element analysis
effect of cell wall thickness and initial cell angle was studied by means of finite element analysis. An analytical
equation was also given for the yield stress of such materials under tension.

1. Introduction
Over the past several decades, developments in structural en-
gineering design and technology in aircraft industry as well as auto-
motive, sports, and leisure sectors have demanded novel materials to
meet higher engineering specifications [1]. Such materials are to pos-
sess a combination of high stiffness and strength with significant weight
savings. Structural material with a negative Poisson’s ratio was ex-
plored [1,2], known as auxetic materials [3,4].
Lakes [5] first discovered this negative Poisson’s ratio effect in
polyurethane (PU) foam with re-entrant structures and responded to a
comment in Ref. [6] on this negative trait. The key to the auxetic be-
havior was the negative value of Poisson’s ratio and this structural
material was foreseen with a wide range of applications: better artificial
bones, improved sound and shock absorbers and enhanced bulletproof
vests; gaskets and seals were another evident area of applications [7].
Subsequently, researchers managed to purposely fabricate a wide range
of synthetic auxetic materials covering all major classes of materials,
such as metals [8,9], polymers [10,11], textile [12,13], composites
[14,15] and ceramics [16]. A methodology to convert conventional
foams into auxetic ones was first reported by Lakes [5] for polymer
foams, which was followed by Choi and Lakes [8] and Friis et al. [9] to
fabricate auxetic metallic foams. Fabrication processes such as multi-
phase auxetic fabrication [17,18] were then developed and modified by
some other researchers [19]. Recently, soft lithography has become an
advantageous technology to make structural materials on different
scales [20], especially for metal cellular structures. The selective laser
melting (SLM) or electron beam melting (EBM) techniques were em-
ployed to fabricate the auxetic materials [21,22], and the direct laser
writing method (DLW) was also used [23,24]. One disadvantage of the
re-entrant honeycomb is, however, the difficulty in manufacturing them
on a commercial scale [1]. Other topologies including chiral shape
[25,26], star shape [27,28], arrowhead shape honeycombs [29] and
certain designed foams [30,31] leading to an auxetic effect might
eventually yield a commercially acceptable structure in terms of man-
ufacturability and performance.
Materials with negative Poisson’s ratio demonstrate a series of
particular characteristics over conventional ones, such as enhanced
toughness and shear or indentation resistance [32], along with im-
proved sound and vibration absorption [33]. They have been also
exploited for applications as fasteners [34], tougher composites [35],
medicine [36], tissue engineering [37] and others [33]. Up to now,
studies have concentrated mainly on the small deformation elastic
properties of negative Poisson’s ratio materials, in terms of the elastic
modulus and elastic Poisson’s ratio [19,38–41]. Chan and Evans
[10,42] fabricated auxetic foams and characterized their mechanical
behaviors under compression and tension, respectively, with small de-
formation. Koudelka et al. [43] printed a three dimensional re-entrant
structure to test its stress variation under quasi-static compression.
Unlike the unconverted foams, the re-entrant structured foams showed
no significant plateau region up to a maximum compression at 50%
strain [44], similar to the outcomes of Ref. [10]. Auxetic effect and

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: glu@swin.edu.au (G. Lu).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2017.09.076
Received 29 May 2017; Received in revised form 5 September 2017; Accepted 26 September 2017
Available online 28 September 2017
0263-8223/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Zhang et al.
compression behavior of 3D auxetic textile structure were investigated
by Zhou et al. [45] and they found that the auxetic composite behaved
more like a damping material with a lower range of compression stress.
Further, Zhang et al. [46] simulated the in-plane dynamic crushing
behaviors of auxetic honeycombs and found that the plateau stress at
the proximal end and the energy absorption could be improved by in-
creasing the negative cell angle, the relative density, the impact velo-
city, and the matrix material strength. An effective numerical model
was developed to simulate auxetic composite sandwich panels sub-
jected to blast loading [47] and demonstrated that this proposed
auxetic panel was a promising protective structure against blast load-
ings. In addition, Alderson et al. [48] simulated the responses of re-
entrant hexagonal and re-entrant trichiral honeycombs subject to out-
of-plane bending and found that they underwent synclastic (dome-
shape) curvature deformation. All the previous studies have been con-
cerned with small deformation behavior, mainly under compression.
Research on the large deformation post-yielding behaviors of auxetic
structures under tension is limited, but in this case, their mechanical
behaviors such as deformation and Poisson’s ratio may be of much
difference.
In this paper, a simple but typical auxetic structure, re-entrant
honeycomb, is employed, and its large deformation tensile behavior is
experimentally and numerically investigated. Polymer and stainless
steel specimens were made by 3D printing. The deformation modes,
stresses and Poisson’s ratios of the re-entrant honeycombs are studied.
2. Experiments
2.1. Specimens
The re-entrant honeycombs were manufactured by using 3D
printing technology with stainless steel and polymer, as shown in Fig. 1.
l 0 is the original length of the inclined cell walls and h 0 that of the
vertical cell walls. θ0 is the initial angle between the inclined and ver-
tical cell walls. T and t are the specimen thickness and cell wall thick-
ness, respectively. Five cells of each sample were chosen randomly for
(a) (b) (c)
(d) (e)
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Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101
measurement of their dimensions by a digital caliper, which represents
12.5% of the total cell number in the stainless steel sample, or 14.3%
for the polymer sample. Average dimensions of the printed samples are
given in Table 1.
From Fig. 1(a), it has H0 = 2(h0 − l0cosθ0) and L0 = 2l0sinθ0. For a
repeatable cell in a re-entrant specimen, the thickness of the vertical
walls on both sides is t/2, the relative density (the ratio between the
volume occupied by the solid cell walls and the nominal volume of a
reputable cell, H0L0) of the specimen can thus be calculated as
ρ∗ (2l 0 + h 0) t
ρ0 = =
ρs 2l 0sinθ0 (h 0−l 0cosθ0) (1)
∗
where ρ and ρs are the densities of the re-entrant honeycomb and the
solid cell wall material, respectively. Consequently, for stainless steel
auxetic structure, the relative density is 21%, while it is 8.59% and
9.91%, respectively, for polymer-X1 and polymer-X2. The slight differ-
ence in the relative density of polymer-X1 and polymer-X2 is due to a
small difference in the value of angle θ0 (as shown in Table 1).
The stainless steel samples (Fig. 1b and c) were 3D printed by using
the selective laser melting machine ProX DMP 200 from 3D Systems,
which has a maximum laser power of 300 W. Re-entrant stainless steel
structures were built layer-by-layer using a laser beam of 1.07 µm
wavelength to melt the 17–4 PH powder with a particle size of
20–32 µm. The laser power and laser focal plane position were selected
as 240 W and 0.6 mm, respectively. The travelling speed of laser beam
was set at 2500 mm/s. The total number of layers for each sample was
180 with an approximate thickness of 40 µm for each layer. After
printing the re-entrant stainless steel samples, wire cutting was em-
ployed to cut off the samples from the printing substrate, using CNC
Wire cutting machine (model Alpha OC, Fanuc Robocut).
Liquid epoxy resin containing reactive diluents was used to fabricate
the re-entrant polymer samples. Plastic/photopolymer auxetic samples
(Fig. 1d and e) were created after hardening epoxy resin using stereo
lithography (SL) process. In the ProJet 6000 HD 3D printer, SL process
uses visible or ultraviolet (UV) laser and scanning mechanism to se-
lectively solidify liquid photopolymer in order to form a layer of the
Fig. 1. Photographs of samples: (a) sketch of a re-
entrant unit cell; (b) auxetic stainless steel sample
to be loaded in the X2 direction (5 × 8 cells); (c)
auxetic stainless steel sample to be loaded in the
X1 direction (5 × 8 cells); (d) auxetic polymer
sample to be loaded in the X2 direction (5 × 7
cells); (e) auxetic polymer sample to be loaded in
the X1 direction (5 × 7 cells); (f) details of the
fixtures holding one side of the sample.
(f)
J. Zhang et al.
Table 1
Material and dimensions of the samples (Note: Letters X1 and X2 are the loading directions).
Name Material h0 (mm)
Polymer – X1 VisiJet SL Flex 16.8
Polymer – X2 VisiJet SL Flex 16.8
Stainless steel – X1 17-4 PH 16.8
Stainless steel – X2 17-4 PH 16.8
sample. AUTOCAD 3D model was sliced to 40 layers and then the UV
laser scanned according to the in-plane profile of the model, which
solidified the liquid resin. The resin was hardened, one slice at a time,
to a prescribed depth of 0.125 mm. The build platform moved down
0.125 mm after each layer was polymerized. The total thickness of 40
layers was T = 5 mm. The dimensional accuracy was within
0.025–0.05 mm per 25.4 mm.
In both the manufacturing methods, in order to eliminate the effect
of building direction on the mechanical properties, all the samples were
built in the same orientation. The out-of-plane direction aligned with
the building direction (i.e. the direction of the laser).
In order to capture the local displacement fields, Vic-2D image
correlation system was employed, which required adequate and dis-
tinguishable stochastic spots on the specimens. Therefore, all the sam-
ples were first coated with a layer of white paint-Dura Max (Dulux) and
then left for at least two hours till the paint had dried. Afterwards, the
samples were sprayed with Spray Easy (British Paints) to have black
dots on the surface.
2.2. Properties of the parent materials
In order to obtain the properties of cell wall material, standard
samples to the ASTM standards E8/E8M-15a (for stainless steel) and
D638-14 (for polymer) were also printed using identical values of op-
erating parameters to those for the auxetic samples. For both stainless
steel and polymer samples, their gauge length is 25.0 mm. The average
dimensions from several measurements are 6.34 mm in width and
5.28 mm in thickness for the stainless steel samples. For the polymer
samples, the average width and thickness are 5.99 mm and 3.35 mm,
respectively. Engineering stress-strain curves of the different samples
were obtained and are given in Fig. 2. Meanwhile values of the density
of the stainless steel and polymer were measured as 7550 kg/m3 and
1164 kg/m3, respectively, by calculating the average ratio of mass of
the sample in the gauge length to the corresponding volume. Three
nominally identical samples were tested and the stress-strain curves of
both the materials were repeatable except for the value of the fracture
strain for the polymer. The difference in fracture strain might be due to
the manufacturing technique. Since fracture strain will not be used in
Fig. 2. Engineering stress-strain curves of the parent materials: (a) stainless steel; (b) polymer.
Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101
l0 (mm) θ0 (degree) t (mm) T (mm) Number of Cells
8.4 45 0.33 5 5×7
8.4 40 0.33 5 5×7
8.4 30 0.5 7.2 5×8
8.4 30 0.5 7.2 5×8
the subsequent analysis in this study, the exact reason for the difference
was not explored further.
The mechanical behavior of the cell wall material may be slightly
different from that of the standard samples. Therefore, some cell wall
pieces were cut from the auxetic samples and then subjected to micro-
and nano-indentation tests. From the indentation tests it was found that
the hardness of the auxetic samples was approximately 20% lower than
that of the standard tensile test coupons. This may be because material
properties are sensitive to printing process such as the multiple passes,
which affects the porosity, residual stresses etc. Therefore, in the finite
element simulation a factor of 80% was applied to the flow stress in the
stress-strain curves measured from the tensile tests.
2.3. Experimental setup
Uniaxial tensile tests were conducted by using Zwick Roell machine
(Zwick/Z010) with a load cell of 1 kN. Polymer – X1 and Stainless steel
– X1 were tested in the X1 direction, while Polymer – X2 and Stainless
steel – X2 in the X2 direction. In each test, two sides of the specimen
were pin-joined, allowing the edge to rotate freely, and the other two
free. Small fixtures were fabricated from 17-4 PH stainless steel to allow
the lateral movement in the X2 direction (Fig. 1f). Meanwhile, grease
was applied on the contact surfaces to reduce friction between the
specimen and the fixture during the tests. One edge of the sample was
attached to a fixed position while the other moved with the cross-head
at 3 mm/min. Each test was stopped when fracture occurred.
3. Finite element analysis
Finite element (FE) models with the same dimensions as those in the
tests were set up and corresponding numerical simulations were per-
formed by using ABAQUS 6.11-2. In the simulations, three-node
quadratic Timoshenko beam element (B22) was used to mesh the cell
walls of re-entrant honeycombs with the element size 0.24 mm (35
elements in each inclined wall), which was shown to produce con-
verged FE results. The stress-strain relationships obtained from ASTM
standard tests were employed in the FE models as the material beha-
vior. In regard of loads and confinements, a uniform displacement was
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J. Zhang et al. Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101

Fig. 3. Deformed polymer samples in the tests: (a)-(d) for

loading in the X2 direction; (e)-(h) for loading in the X1
direction.

Fig. 4. Deformed stainless steel samples in the tests: (a)-(d)

for loading in the X2 direction; (e)-(h) for loading in the X1
direction.

Fig. 5. Deformed polymer specimens from FE simulations:

(a)-(d) for loading in the X2 direction; (e)-(h) for loading in
the X1 direction.

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J. Zhang et al. Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101

Fig. 6. Deformed stainless steel specimens from FE simula-

tions: (a)-(d) for loading in the X2 direction; (e)-(h) for
loading in the X1 direction.

Fig. 7. Engineering stress-strain curves: polymer sample loaded in the X2 direction (a) and in the X1 direction (b); and stainless steel sample loaded in the X2 direction (c) and in the X1
direction (d).

applied as loading to the corresponding nodes of the models whilst the
supporting nodes were constrained in the loading direction, but free in
the other perpendicular direction. Failure (fracture) of materials was
not considered in simulations.
4. Experimental and finite element analysis results
4.1. Deformation pattern
For each test, a load-displacement curve was obtained directly from
the machine. The load can be converted to the nominal engineering
stress by taking its ratio to the nominal cross-sectional area of the
specimen, and the displacement divided by the initial length of the

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J. Zhang et al.
Fig. 9. Total engineering strain in the two directions against the cross-head displacement (a); and the averaged value (b).
specimen gives the engineering strain. As expected, when the polymer
auxetic sample was stretched in the X2 direction, lateral expansion
occurred, as shown in Fig. 3(a) and (b). This expansion indicates a
negative Poisson’s ratio, until the initially inclined cell walls became
horizontal (Fig. 3c). Afterwards, cells shrank in the X1 direction as they
were further stretched in the X2 direction (Fig. 3d), which indicated
that the sample then possessed a positive Poisson’s ratio during this
stage, similar to conventional materials. When loaded in the X1 direc-
tion, as exhibited in Fig. 3(e)-(h), the polymer sample kept expanding in
both the X1 and X2 directions until the initially inclined cell walls be-
came vertical and finally broke. The characteristic of a negative Pois-
son’s ratio was present during the complete tensile process. Similarly,
the deformation patterns of the stainless steel samples are shown in
Fig. 4(a)-(d) (X2 direction loading) and Fig. 4(e)-(f) (X1 direction
loading). A difference from the polymer sample is that the sample in
Fig. 4(d) fractured at some cells before the cells started to contract. In
addition, considerable frictional effect (Fig. 3c, h, 4 b and g) was ob-
served even though grease was applied to minimise friction in the tests.
The overall specimen became barrel shaped and the cells deformed
inhomogeneously, especially those within the bend of two columns in
Fig. 3(h). Corresponding to the experimental observations, Figs. 5 and 6
show the FE deformation patterns (with free lateral movements, or no
friction). The cells expanded homogeneously.
4.2. Tensile stress versus strain curves
As mentioned before, the engineering stress-strain curves can be
obtained from the load-displacement curves of the specimens and they
are shown in Fig. 7, for re-entrant honeycombs made of polymer and
stainless steel. Generally, the experimental results agree with the FE
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Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101
Fig. 8. Points traced for determining the longitudinal (blue
points) and lateral (orange points) engineering strain during
the tests. Note that this figure is similar to Fig. 3(a)-(d).
data with respect to the characteristics of curves and magnitudes of
stress. In Fig. 7(c), in the test some cell walls of the stainless steel
honeycomb fractured at approximately 0.15 of the engineering strain,
resulting in a sudden decrease in the stress at a small strain. Further-
more, in terms of the shape of the curves for the loading in the X2
direction, there exists a plateau stage after an initial elastic stage, fol-
lowed by a final stage with a rapid increase in stress, which is similar to
cellular materials under compression [49–51]. It should be noted that,
from Fig. 7(a), the test result is a slightly higher than that of the si-
mulation. This may be explained by recalling the comparison between
the deforming profiles in Figs. 3(c) and 5(c). The cells deform non-
uniformly in the test resulting from the horizontal friction on the con-
tacting surfaces at the top and bottom ends, while they deform uni-
formly in simulation. This shows that the slight transverse restraint
leads to a small increase of stress.
4.3. Poisson’s ratio
Poisson’s ratio is an important parameter of a material, which
generally represents the negative of the ratio of the lateral extension to
the longitudinal extension (extension in the loading direction).
Poisson’s ratio calculated from the engineering strain reflects the
macroscopic and averaged value. To observe the progressive deforma-
tion of auxetic honeycombs in both the X1 and X2 directions, a series of
images (frames) were captured by the Digital Image Correlation (DIC)
System during the testing process. Consequently, the successive incre-
ment of the total extension between frames was captured and the
Poisson’s ratio could then be calculated at each increment. From these
images, local displacement field and hence engineering strain field)
were calculated. Here, eight pairs of points were selected and
J. Zhang et al. Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101

Fig. 10. Poisson’s ratio from the tests and finite element simulations: polymer samples loaded in the X2 (a) and X1 (b) directions; stainless steel samples loaded in the X2 (c) and X1 (d)
directions.

F2 head displacement in Fig. 9(a) and their averaged value is shown in

Fig. 9(b). As expected, the strain in the loading direction increased
2 linearly with the cross-head displacement. However, strain in the other
A direction increased initially and reached a peak, then it decreased
gradually. This demonstrates the expansion and then shrinking of the
auxetic honeycombs in uniaxial tensile tests, as observed before.
For plastic deformation, Poisson’s ratio was calculated as the ratio of
M strain increments in the two directions[52,53], instead of using the
X2 A
B total engineering strain. It represents the instantaneous incremental
X1 deformation features of the re-entrant honeycombs. Values of the
F2 0 Poisson’s ratio such calculated from the tests and finite element analysis
2 are plotted in Fig. 10. In all the plots, the Poisson’s ratio changes with
the total strain in a non-linear way, with both negative and positive
values. For auxetic polymer samples loaded in the X2 direction, Pois-
F2
X2 son’s ratio from both the test and simulation increases gradually from
2
about −2.5 to about 2.0, reaching zero at an approximate strain of 0.6.
2 This indicates that when a polymer re-entrant honeycomb is subjected
X1 B
to tension in the longitudinal direction, it expands firstly and then
F2 M
(a) (b) contracts along the lateral direction. This agrees with the observed
deformation patterns during the tensile tests (Fig. 3). It also shows that
Fig. 11. A single re-entrant cell loaded in the X2 direction (a); and the free body diagram
as the deformation progresses the re-entrant honeycomb behaves from
of the cell wall AB (b).
an auxetic material to a conventional one with positive Poisson’s ratio.
Under the load in the X1 direction (Fig. 10b), Poison’s ratio was always
monitored (four in the horizontal direction as marked in orange, and negative and it decreased to as low as −2.8 at a longitudinal strain of
the other four in the vertical direction, in blue) (Fig. 8). Using the first 0.38. However, around this point the lowest values from the test and
frame as the reference, the vertical relative displacement between the simulation are very different. The reason can be found by referring to
corresponding points divided by the initial distance gave the en- Fig. 3(h). The two columns of cells did not move freely due to friction
gineering strain in the loading direction. Similarly, the lateral en- on both the loading and fixed edges, resulting in reduced lateral ex-
gineering strain was calculated. The lateral strains and longitudinal pansion. Similarly, for the stainless steel sample in Fig. 10(c), the
strains measured at the various locations are plotted against the cross-

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J. Zhang et al. Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101

Fig. 12. Tensile stress and theoretical yield stress of polymer sample (a); and stainless steel sample (b), loaded in both the X1 and X2 directions.

5. Discussions

5.1. Yield stress

It would be interesting to give some theoretical consideration on the

yield stress of a sample. For reasonably thick cell walls, this global
yielding is governed by the plastic collapse of a cell. Consider a single
cell under tensile force F2 in the X2 direction (Fig. 11). When plastic
collapse occurs, plastic hinges form at all the corners. Assuming the
bending moment at the hinges reaches the fully plastic bending moment
Mp = 1/4σys Tt 2 , where σys is the yield stress of the parent material of cell
walls, from the equilibrium of cell wall AB, the force F2 is
F2 = 2σ2 l 0 Tsinθ0 . The corresponding nominal stress is hence the ratio of
F2 and the cross-sectional area:
2
σ2 1 t 1
= ⎛ ⎞⎜ ⎟

σys 2 ⎝ l 0 ⎠ sin2 θ0 (2)

Fig. 13. Effect of cell wall thickness (t) on engineering stress-strain curves of the re-
entrant honeycombs loaded in the X2 direction (θ0 = 40°). Similarly, the tensile yield stress in the X1-direction, σ1, is given as
2
σ1 1 t 1
= ⎛ ⎞⎜ ⎟

σys 2 ⎝ l 0 ⎠ cosθ0 (h 0 / l 0−cosθ0 ) (3)

Analytical predictions from Eqs. (2) and (3) are compared with the
experimental results for polymer and stainless steel samples loaded in
both the X1 and X2 directions in Fig. 12. As in the finite element si-
mulations, the yield stress of the parent materials is taken as 80% of
that from the coupon tests. The comparison indicates that Eqs. (2) and
(3) could predict the initial yield stress of stainless steel samples for
both the directions (Fig. 12b), but it is not the case for the polymer
samples. This is because, compared with conventional manufacturing
processes, the stereo lithography (SL) process method lacks dimensional
accuracy due to parameters involving layer thickness, hatch over-cure
and hatch spacing [54].

5.2. Effect of geometrical parameters

Combining Eqs. (1) and (2), the tensile yield stress in the X2-di-
Fig. 14. Effect of the cell angle on the engineering stress-strain curves of re-entrant rection, σ2, can be re-written as
honeycombs loaded in the X2 direction (ρ0 = 7.5%).
2
σ2 ρ∗
= 2 ⎛⎜ ⎞⎟
2
( h0
l0
−cosθ0 )
Poisson’s ratio was negative firstly, about −4.0, and then it increased σys h 2
gradually. The magnitude from the test becomes lower than that from ⎝ ρs ⎠ (2 + 0
)
l0 (4)
the simulation after a longitudinal engineering strain of 0.1, due to the
lateral constraint from friction and fracture of some cell walls in the It indicates that, in addition to the cell dimensions l0 and h0, the yield
test. For the stainless steel sample loaded in the X1 direction (Fig. 10d), stress is also related to both the relative density (ρ0) and initial angle of
the trend is the same as that in Fig. 10(b). cells (θ0).
Influence of the relative density on the tensile stress was studied by
using the FE models in Section 3. This was achieved by changing the

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J. Zhang et al.
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 16. Force-displacement curves with different values of friction coefficient.
cell wall thickness, t, in Eq. (1). Four values of the cell wall thickness
were considered: t = 0.15 mm (ρ0 = 4.5%), t = 0.20 mm (ρ0 = 6.0%),
t = 0.25 mm (ρ0 = 7.5%), and t = 0.30 mm (ρ0 = 9.0%). FE results are
plotted in Fig. 13. As indicated in Eq. (4), a higher value of relative
density leads to a higher value of the tensile stress plateau, as well as
the initial slope of the stress-strain curves.
The initial angle of cell, θ0, also affects the tensile stress. FE models
with θ0 = 30°, 35°, 40°, 45° were established and the cell dimensions, l0
and h0, were fixed at the same values as those in the tests. The relative
density of all these FE models was kept the same at 7.5% by changing
the value of thickness t. Therefore, a larger value of the initial angle
corresponds to a thicker cell wall. Fig. 14 presents effect of the cell
angle on the tensile stress in the X2-loading direction. A larger initial
angle leads to a higher tensile stress plateau and the elastic slopes of
stress-strain curves, but it decreases the value of the maximum strain
when the stress increases rapidly, similar to the locking strain in cel-
lular materials. For a single cell in Fig. 1(a), the initial height of this cell
is 2(h0 − l0cosθ0) and the maximum extension is 2l0(1 + cosθ0), the
maximum critical strain, εmax, can be expressed as
1 + cosθ0
εmax =
h 0 / l 0−cosθ0
It shows that, for a special case of h0 = 2l0, the corresponding max-
imum strain is related only to the initial angle of cells: a larger one
reduces the critical strain of the final stage of curves.
5.3. Effect of friction
This section explores effect of possible lateral constraint due to
friction. One loading case shown in Fig. 1(d) was considered. Details of
the fixture used in the experiment were reproduced in the FE model and
different values of the friction coefficient, μ, were defined for the con-
tacting surfaces (General Contact). In the simulation, three-node
quadratic Timoshenko beam element (B32) was used for meshing.
Composite Structures 184 (2018) 92–101
Fig. 15. Deformed (ε = 0.7) patterns for different values of
friction coefficient of the polymer samples: (a) μ = 0.1; (b)
μ = 0.3 ; (c) μ = 0.5 ; (d) μ = 0.8 . The original specimen is
also shown in dotted lines.
(d)
Other definitions such as element size, loading and boundary conditions
were the same with those in the Section 3. The stress-strain relationship
of polymer in the Section 2.2 was employed in the FE models.
Fig. 15 shows the deformed samples at ε = 0.7 (corresponding to
the displacement 72.5 mm). The deformation type at μ = 0.3 is similar
to that in Fig. 3(b). Meanwhile, for μ = 0.8, no lateral movement of
cells at both the proximal and distal ends was observed, as if the lateral
movement was fully constrained. Fig. 16 illustrates the force-displace-
ment curves for different values of friction coefficient. A large value of
friction coefficient brings forward the final stage. However, when the
friction is small (μ ≤ 0.3) the curves are almost the same with excep-
tion of slight fluctuations. For the friction coefficient lager than 0.3, the
curves are all similar to that of the fully constrained case (μ = 0.8).
6. Conclusions
As typical auxetic structures, several stainless steel and polymer re-
entrant honeycomb samples were printed using the 3D printing tech-
nology. Quasi-static tensile tests were then performed in both the X1
and X2 directions, followed by the finite element simulation. The de-
formation, tensile stress and Poisson’s ratio of re-entrant honeycombs
were studied in the tests and simulations. A good agreement between
the experimental and FE results has been obtained.
It has been observed that when loaded in the X2 direction the re-
entrant honeycombs had a large strain of 1.3 and the value of Poisson’s
ratio changed during the deformation. The honeycombs initially ex-
hibited an auxetic feature with negative Poisson’s ratio almost as low as
−4. Beyond a certain point of deformation, they behaved as conven-
tional honeycombs with a positive value of Poisson’s ratio. In the X1-
direction, the auxetic samples kept expanding until the inclined cell
walls became horizontal. The Poisson’s ratio was negative for the whole
process. In terms of the tensile stress, all the stress-strain curves had a
plateau stage, similar to compression of conventional cellular materials.
An analytical formula based on the plastic collapse of the cell walls
has been given, which could lead to a reasonable estimate of the yield
stress for stainless steel honeycombs, but not so for the polymer sam-
ples. A higher relative density led to a higher stress plateau and the
elastic slopes of stress-strain curves, as expected. For a given density, a
larger initial cell angle also enhanced the plateau stress, but reduced the
(5)
maximum strain in the final stage of the stress-strain curves.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Dr Andrew Ang for his help with the
nano-indentation tests. They acknowledge, with thanks, the financial
support from the Australian Research Council (Grant No.
DP160102612), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant
Nos. 51578361 and 11572214), Shanxi Scholarship Council of China
(2013-046) and the State Scholarship Fund of China Scholarship
Council (CSC).
100
J. Zhang et al.
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