The Effects of Gallium Metal Reinforcement on the Crushing Performance of Re-entrant Honeycombs at Different Temperatures

Abstract

This study proposes to investigate the crushing performance of auxetic honeycombs by combining liquid and solid phase materials in one structure. The multiphase structures were produced by injecting a liquid Gallium metal into the hierarchical voids of the proposed metamaterials and tested at different temperatures (22 and 35 0C), where the melting temperature of Gallium metal is 29.4 0C. The deformation mechanism, compressive strength, absorbed energy, and Poisson’s ratio (PR) of the samples was compared at different strains and at different temperatures. Results show that multi-material samples with Gallium metal lead to a progressive deformation mechanism and stabilize the fracture mechanism; however, they only exhibit larger compressive strength in a few cases. In addition, the effects of the phase change of Gallium from solid to liquid when the temperature increase from 22 0C to 35 0C stand out in the percent change of mechanical response. Overall, the presented samples in this work can be recommended to manipulate the collapse mechanism with a multi-material approach of liquid and solid constituents.