Dynamic response of corner-enhanced biomimetic spiderweb hierarchical structure under drop-weight impact

Inspired by the efficient stress dispersion of natural spider webs, this study proposed a novel corner-enhanced spiderweb honeycomb (CESH) sandwich panel. A combined experimental and numerical simulation approach was employed to investigate its dynamic response under drop-weight impact, focusing on the effects of hierarchical topology, core layer, cell wall thickness, impactor size, and impact energy. The results demonstrated that the corner-enhanced and hierarchical design significantly enhanced the impact performance of the conventional spiderweb honeycomb (CSH). Specifically, the first-order corner-enhanced spiderweb honeycomb (CESH-F) exhibited a 64.5% increase in energy absorption and a 28.6% increase in specific energy absorption compared to the CSH, with the third-order corner-enhanced spiderweb honeycomb (CESH-T) further improving these metrics by 44.3% and 16.6%, respectively. Furthermore, increasing the number of core layers enhanced the global stiffness of the CESH-F but reduced the crushing force efficiency (CFE), whereas the corner-reinforced and hierarchical structures maintained higher CFE, indicating higher energy absorption capacity. Parametric studies revealed that while the performance of CSH was highly sensitive to the cell wall thickness, the hierarchical structures exhibited robust stability. The impactor size significantly influenced the failure mode, shifting from local punching to a petal-like distributed pattern as the size increased. Across all impact energies, the CESH-T consistently demonstrated superior performance, achieving a CFE 36.1% higher than CSH at 60 J.