Manufacturing and mechanical properties of composite orthotropic Kagome honeycomb using novel modular method

This work deals with manufacturing and analysis of orthotropic composite Kagome honeycomb panels. A novel modular mold is proposed to manufacture carbon fiber reinforced composite Kagome honeycombs. The designed mold can be assembled freely to manufacture Kagome honeycombs with different configuration combinations and can realize easy demolding. Furthermore, two typical fiber placement methods are considered during the fabrication process, from which the more effective fiber placement method is determined. Finally, representative volume element method is used to perform homogenization analysis of the Kagome honeycomb panels and to obtain equivalent in-plane and bending stiffness. Finite element analysis using these equivalent properties is conducted and validated against the experimental results of the manufactured composite Kagome honeycomb panels under different loading cases.