Multiple blast resistance enhancement through negative-mass meta-honeycombs with multi-resonator

Conventional honeycomb materials are difficult to resist multiple blast because the enormous energy generated by the explosion would cause plastic deformation of the material, which weakens the strength of the structure. In this paper, a novel meta-honeycomb is designed by adding local resonance system to hierarchical cells, which is based on the multi-resonator-enhanced bandgap property, to withstand multiple blast. This meta-honeycomb reverses the energy absorption mode of traditional honeycomb materials; that is, the energy absorption by plastic deformation of the material becomes the reflection of the stress wave through the equivalent negative mass property generated by the local resonance system, which significantly reduces the deformation of the material and the reaction force at the support under impact loads. In particular, for the secondary explosion loading, the maximum deformation of the meta-honeycomb is reduced by 74% compared with the traditional hierarchical honeycomb. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the design of meta-honeycomb can be optimized by coupling the bandgap generated by the negative mass property, thereby improving the energy absorption efficiency. This research result provides a new concept for the design of blast-proof materials, which has a high potential for a wide range of engineering applications.