Vibration and Flutter of a Honeycomb Sandwich Plate with Zero Poisson's Ratio

A honeycomb is a kind of excellent lightweight structure and a honeycomb sandwich plate with zero Poisson's ratio (ZPR) core is used widely in morphing structures. In this paper, a sandwich plate composed of a honeycomb core with zero Poisson's ratio is analyzed for free vibrations and flutter under supersonic airflows. The equivalent elastic parametric formulas of the honeycomb core for zero Poisson's ratio are proposed. The models are compared for their natural frequencies by theoretical and finite element methods respectively, which verifies the validity of the equivalent elastic parametric formulas and the model for the honeycomb sandwich plate with zero Poisson's ratio. The influence of the geometric parameters of the honeycomb plate on the vibration frequencies is obtained. Three kinds of honeycomb cores, namely, regular hexagon, auxetic and hybrid with zero Poisson's ratio, are compared through natural frequencies of the sandwich plate. It is found that the frequency of the zero Poisson's ratio honeycomb sandwich plate is the second one when the other parameters are the same. The flutter of the honeycomb plate is analyzed by using the first order piston theory under supersonic flows. The critical flutter velocity of the plate is obtained, and the influence of geometric parameters of the honeycomb plate on the critical flutter velocities is obtained.