Energy Absorption of Curvilinear Hybrid Auxetic Honeycombs

Auxetic cellular materials attract increasing attention for crashworthiness and impact protection due to their negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR). However, conventional double-arrowhead auxetic honeycombs (DAHs) with straight ligaments often exhibit limited energy absorption and unstable collapse under large deformation. In this study, a curvilinear hybrid auxetic honeycomb (CHAH) is proposed by replacing straight walls with smoothly curved ligaments and embedding a circular positive Poisson’s ratio subcell to provide symmetric support. The mechanical behavior of the CHAH is investigated through a combined experimental–numerical approach. Finite element simulations are validated by quasi-static compression experiments, and a parametric study is conducted to evaluate the influence of key geometric variables on specific energy absorption (SEA) and peak crushing force (PCF). Based on the validated simulations, a multi-objective optimization framework integrating optimal Latin hypercube sampling, radial basis function surrogate modeling, and NSGA-II is employed to optimize the structural parameters. Compared with the conventional DAH under identical material and volume conditions, the CHAH exhibits significantly improved deformation stability and energy absorption capability, with SEA increasing by up to 67.06% and a more stable plateau response. In addition, SEA and PCF can be effectively tuned by varying the geometric angles (θ1, θ2).