Bandgap capability of hybrid Kirigami inspired cellular structures

Periodic cellular core structures included in sandwich panels possess good stiffness while saving weight and only lately their potential to act as passive vibration filters is increasingly being studied. Classical homogeneous honeycombs show poor vibracoustic performance and only by varying certain geometrical features, a shift and/or variation in bandgap frequency range occurs. This work aims to investigate the vibration filtering properties of the AUXHEX "hybrid" core, which is a cellular structure containing cells of different shapes. Numerical simulations are carried out using two different approaches. The first technique used is the harmonic analysis with commercially available software, and the second one, which has been proved to be computationally more efficient, consists in the Wave Finite Element Method (WFEM), which still makes use of finite elements (FEM) packages, but instead of working with large models, it exploits the periodicity of the structure by analysing only the unit cell, thanks to the Floquet-Bloch theorem. Both techniques allow to produce graphs such as frequency response plots (FRF's) and dispersion curves, which are powerful tools used to identify the spectral bandgap signature of the considered structure. The hybrid cellular core pattern AUXHEX is analysed and results are discussed, focusing the investigation on the possible spectral bandgap signature heritage that a hybrid core experiences from their "parents" homogeneous cell cores.