Synclastic Behavior of the Auxetic Core for Furniture Panels

The cores of honeycomb panels are usually made of hexagonal cells. Due to their structure, they create anticlastic surfaces that are difficult to use in furniture design. Synclastic surfaces in lightweight sandwich panels are typically associated with auxetic cores characterized by a negative Poisson’s ratio. This study aimed to transform the hexagonal cell cores into cells with a negative or positive Poisson’s ratio (NPR, PPR), enabling these cores to form synclastic surfaces. New core structures for synclastic furniture sandwich honeycomb panels were modeled numerically and experimentally. It has been demonstrated that reentrant cells with NPR create synclastic surfaces, and new shapes of core cells, created by transforming hexagonal cells with PPR, also enable the formation of synclastic surfaces. Cores’ synclasticity was assessed in two orthogonal planes using physical models and Finite Element Analysis (FEA). A new and original discovery is the demonstration that not only auxetic but also modified hexagonal cells with Poisson’s ratios of 𝜈𝑥𝑦 = 0.545 and 𝜈𝑦𝑥 = 0.512, respectively, exhibit excellent synclastic properties. The agreement between FEA and experiment was very high. The results show that not only NPR but also cell topology provides a practical route to the synclastic formation of cores without the use of auxetic materials.