Abstract:
Different industries, mostly aerospace and automotive, focus on designing components to increase
their strength-to-weight ratio and reduce manufacturing times. Honeycomb structures are the most
suitable solution for this demand. The different researchers made a bulk of investigations mainly
focused on evaluating and analyzing the different cellular configurations. Also, additive
manufacturing (AM) is becoming their 1st choice to print these honeycomb structures. The
honeycomb structure's geometrical parameters i.e. cell wall length, cell wall thickness, and height
are critical factors and greatly affect its strength. In the presented investigation, 48 honeycomb
structures of different cellular configurations including hexagon, over-expanded hexagon, and
square shape by varying geometrical parameters were manufactured using FDM (fused deposition
modeling) including 16 samples of each shape. We obtain a new degree of control over the cellular
architecture of honeycomb structures by utilizing cutting-edge AM techniques, which improve
mechanical characteristics and reduce weight. The material used for printing these samples is
PLA+. Testing was performed using out-of-plane loading to investigate the structure strength and
analyzed using Taguchi and ANOVA (Analysis of Variance). Four levels of each i.e., the height
of core 12.7, 25.4, 38.1, and 50.8mm, cell wall length 3, 6, 9, and 12 mm, and cell wall thickness
0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 mm are considered for designing and printing samples having 80x80 mm crosssectional area chosen by following ASTM C365 standard for compression testing. Moreover,
multi-objective optimization is performed to optimize the strength-to-weight ratio and
manufacturing cost using the Taguchi method. Hexagonal cellular configuration is selected to
have better configuration than square and over-expanded because hexagonal shape structures are
less costly have less printing time, contain less weight, give better strength-to-weight ratios, and
prove more economical than others. And optimum geometrical parameters resulting from ANOVA
for hexagon shape are the height of core 12.7 mm, cell wall length 6 mm, and cell wall thickness
1mm to increase strength-to-weight ratios and reduce manufacturing cost. Thus, it would be
fruitful to develop more economical structures or components with less weight and high strength
that are undergoing compression loading.
