Homogenization of Honeycomb Core in Sandwich Structures: A Review

Sandwich structures with honeycomb as core have number of applications for aerospace, automobile and civil engineering structures. Finite element method is an efficient and reliable tool for the extensive evaluations and analysis of engineering structures. In analyzing honeycomb sandwich structures, the problem is the huge involved personal effort and computational cost which is associated with the detailed multi-cell honeycomb core finite element modeling and its analysis. A common and more practical approach is the equivalent or homogenized, two or three dimensional finite element model for the honeycomb core. The equivalent models have some limitations in predicting the local behaviors of the structures while the global responses such as deflection can be well predicted. The homogenization process under static and dynamic regime also respond differently. This article reviews the existing homogenization methods for honeycomb core for static and dynamic analyses and tries to figure out the optimum methodology for different finite element analyses.