Abstract: The mean crushing stresses of three kinds of commonly used honeycombs are calculated by using the simplified basic folding element(SBFE) method, which is actually the super folding element (SFE) theory based on the simplified basic folding element. In order to validate these theoretical solutions, the axial crushing simulation of the said honeycombs is implemented by employing the nonlinear finite element method through LS-DYNA. The analytical solutions show excellent agreement with these simulation results. Based on the theoretical solutions of the mean crushing stress, the crashworthiness of the pre-crushed honeycombs is multioptimized by using the multiobjective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm. It is found that the energy absorption capacity of regular hexagonal honeycomb is the most excellent among those of the said honeycombs. Finally, three optimized honeycomb structures under axial dynamic loading are simulated by using LS-DYNA. The numerical simulation results correlate with the analytical results obtained by our crashworthiness optimization very well. This indicates that the crashworthiness optimization of honeycombs based on our deviational theoretical expressions is feasible and effective.

Key words: Axial crushing, Crashworthiness, Honeycomb, Multiobjective optimization, Micro-gripper Rigidity Constraint substitution Force method