Analysis of effective elastic parameters of natural bamboo honeycomb cells(BHC) structure

Bamboo is a kind of green and environmentally friendly building structure material. This work was based on the cavity structural characteristics and excellent physical and mechanical properties of honeycomb sandwich and natural bamboo in the longitudinal direction, the effective elastic parameters of periodically arranged hexagonal bamboo honeycomb cells (BHC) under in-plane and out-of-plane loading were modeled using analytical and numerical approaches. The equivalent density analysis of the BHC was based on the condition of double cell wall thickness. In addition, the effective elastic parameters were analyzed considering the effective bending length, axial compression, shear deformation, and bending deformation of the inclined and vertical members of BHC. Then, different sizes of hexagonal BHC were used for experiments, and the finite element method(FEM) was combined with the computational homogenization technique to validate the effective elastic parameter model of bamboo cells. The results showed that the maximum relative errors between the values of the modeled and simulated elastic parameters of the BHC and the experimental results were 8.6 and 8.7%, respectively, indicating that the constructed effective elastic parameter model better reflected the state of the stressed BHC. This study provides new insights for further research on the mechanical properties of bamboo materials and their application in bamboo-based lightweight and high-strength sandwich structures.