Plateau Stress of Paper Honeycomb as Response to Various Relative Humidities

摘要

A mathematical model was developed to predict the plateau stress of axially loaded paper honeycombs in various humidity environments. It is a simple formula relating the plateau stress to the thickness-to-length ratio of a honeycomb cell, the yielding stress of a cell-wall material tested under a controlled atmosphere [23 ℃ and 50% relative humidity (RH)] and the ambient RH. Paper honeycombs with various thickness-to-length ratios were researched under several levels of RH, and the plateau stress of each kind of paper honeycomb was obtained. The created model was then verified by comparing the predictions with observations. A good agreement between them corroborates the feasibility and accuracy of the model. Predictions by the present model and those by empirical relations were compared as well. A better prediction was obtained using the present model for a wide range of thickness-to-length ratios, suggesting that the present model can replace empirical formulas to provide more accurate and effective predictions of the plateau stress for paper honeycombs. The proposed method can be used to characterize the energy-absorption properties of paper honeycombs in an actual logistic environment, and so can be used to optimize the structural design of paper honeycombs.