Design, fabrication, and analysis of cost effective steel honeycomb structures Gouri Ghongade, Kota Pavan Kalyan, R. Vaira Vignesh, M. Govindaraju ⇑ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India article info Article history: Received 5 October 2019 Accepted 27 September 2020 Available online xxxx Keywords: Circular honeycomb core Reinforcement Static compression Brazing Filler metal abstract Lightweight honeycomb structures helps in considerable weight reduction in industrial applications. The study investigates the effect of reinforcement on the circular core honeycomb structure under axial com- pression behavior. The numerical analysis for load carrying capacity is performed using Abaqus-CAE. For experimental validation, steel honeycomb panels (with and without reinforcements) are fabricated by furnace-brazing technology in a continuous furnace. Though the reinforcements increased the panel weight, a substantial increase in the load carrying capacity (44%)) is observed. The results indicate that reinforced honeycomb structure with cell diameter of 10 mm has the highest load carrying capacity. The experimental results validate the developed numerical model. Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer- ence on Advances in Materials and Manufacturing Applications. 1. Introduction Nowadays, every automobile manufacturing industry focuses on making new and cheaper cars that meet all customer needs. To achieve this goal, designers need to focus on reducing material and production utilization costs without compromising perfor- mance, safety, and aesthetics. Lightweight Honeycomb structures helps in considerable weight reduction, as they exhibit high strength and high energy absorption characteristics without com- promising the vehicle safety. Aluminum honeycomb structures are widely used in automobiles for interior and body panels, spoilers, floors, chassis components, wings, diffusers and energy absorbers. Besides, they are used in a wide range of aerospace and marine applications where strength, weight, damping and dimensional accuracy are essential features. Lightweight structures have given a chance to use the existing materials effectively and at low cost. It is observed that honeycomb structures exhibit better energy absorbing characteristics than that of other structures [1-5]. Many research have been performed in the area related to hon- eycomb structures numerically and experimentally. Numerical analysis was performed by Gibson and Ashby [6,7] to investigate the mechanical properties of cellular honeycomb structure. Sand- wich structures consist of a group of different materials that are attached together so that the material properties of each con- tribute to the structural benefit of the complete assembly. Sand- wich panels generally consist of three components, two thin face sheets and a solid core. The strength to weight ratio and bending stiffness of the sandwich panels are greater than a single solid plate for same total weight and same material for faces. Thus, sandwich panels show high compression properties, greater resistance to deformation and higher natural frequencies than other structural panels [8]. The addition of the thick core in between the face sheets is to increase the flexural stiffness of the panel. As the core has low density, the overall weight of sandwich panel is less. The core can withstand compressive loads without failure [1,9,10]. Honeycomb core may be of hexagonal, circular, triangular geometry. J. Chung and A. M. Waas [11] studied the elastic properties of circular cell honeycomb. Qiang He et al. [12] explored the in-plane dynamic behavior of circular honeycomb structure using finite element sim- ulations. Literature on the fabrication of honeycomb core is dis- cussed in the following section. The fabrication of honeycomb sandwich panels includes the fol- lowing steps as follows:  Expansion of thin sheets laden with epoxy in selective areas, followed by gluing of face sheets on honeycomb as the last step (for aluminum) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.694 2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advances in Materials and Manufacturing Applications. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: m_govindaraju@ch.amrita.edu (M. Govindaraju). Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr Please cite this article as: G. Ghongade, K.P. Kalyan, R. Vaira Vignesh et al., Design, fabrication, and analysis of cost effective steel honeycomb structures, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.694