Integrated honeycomb technology motivated by the structure of beetle forewings

The authors' previously presented architecture of beetle forewings has become the source of motivation for developing an integrated honeycomb structure. In this paper, we briefly review this architecture, describe the characteristics of this proposed novel structure, and, show that the beetle forewing contains a fully integrated honeycomb plate rather than a traditional "honeycomb" structure. Herein, a basic geometrical model of the fiber orientation is also provided, and how to develop an integrated honeycomb technology is discussed. By assuming that each hexagonal space of the honeycomb is filled with a male tool and a continuous plate is built, we consider disassembling the plate into a limited number of basic male tools and a honeycomb plate. The male tools were made with paraffin wax, and basalt fiber meshes were laid inside the female tool. We injected a mixture of shredded basalt fiber and epoxy resin into the mold for making a prototype structure. After solidification at a low temperature followed by the removal of the male tools via heating, an integrated honeycomb plate with trabeculae inside the honeycomb was manufactured. We consider that the proposed manufacturing process, which does not need bonding, is a breakthrough and it is envisioned that it will introduce an alternative to the traditional assembly method of manufacturing honeycomb plates. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.