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• Inspired by beetle elytra intersection unit, a series of novel bionic honeycombs were designed. • Several bio-honeycombs exhibit zero or negative Poisson's ratio. • Bio-honeycombs can improve plateau stress and reduce the peak force effectively. A series of novel bionic honeycombs (bio-honeycombs) are proposed by incorporating the microstructure of the beetle elytra intersection unit into the regular hexagonal honeycomb (Hex) cell. To explore the in-plane mechanical properties and energy absorption performance of bio-honeycombs under different impact speeds, finite element (FE) models are established and verified by empirical formulas and current experiments. The results indicate that the bio-honeycombs outperform the Hex in terms of energy absorption capacity, and the nominal stress–strain curves of the bio-honeycombs show two prominent stages (stage Ⅰ and stage Ⅱ) under quasi-static and mid-impact. Bionic units also undergo two evident deformation stages: preliminary collapse and further crushing. The bending and traction of bionic units make more adjacent cells added to the collapse earlier, forming a global crushed trend, leading to an interesting phenomenon that the localized band of bio-honeycombs are always wider than that of Hex. Also, negative Poisson's ratio is observed in stage Ⅱ from several bio-honeycombs under quasi-static and mid-speed due to bionic units' bending and traction in the further crushing stage. Besides, the number and distribution of ribs have a considerable impact on the crashworthiness of bio-honeycombs. Compared with the Hex, the incorporated bionic units reduce the peak crushing force (PCF) while improving the crashworthiness of bio-honeycomb in the case of the same relative density, which provides a promising potential solution to strengthen the energy absorption performance of honeycomb structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arched structures have increased in importance over the last few years due to their high efficiency in bearing loads. This paper introduces arched ribs to the classical re-entrant honeycomb (RH) as reinforced structures, and then its energy absorption is improved by simultaneously utilizing the reinforced structures and the auxetic deformation of RHs. Herein, the in-plane crashing response of reinforced RHs (RRH) under different impact velocities is investigated with finite element methods verified against the quasi-static compression experiment of 3D-printed RRH specimens. By introducing arched structures, the deformation of RHs becomes more stable and regular, and two plateau stresses are produced in the stress-strain curves of RRHs. Benefiting from the stacking deformation of RRHs and pure compression characteristic of catenary arches, the second plateau stress of all-reinforced RHs (ARH) is 3.8 times higher than the first one. Two plateau stresses of ARHs are derivated theoretically with a relative error of less than 7 %. Furthermore, a parametric study is performed to explore the effect of impact velocities, thicknesses, and the height of arched ribs on the crashing response of RRHs. The present investigation paves a new way toward strengthening the energy absorption of conventional honeycombs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]