Abstract: The paper investigates the compression characteristics and failure process of aluminum honeycomb panel filled with EPP foam (Expanded polypropylene) by experiments and numerical simulations. The test results show that the peak load, mean crushing strength and absorbed energy of the filled aluminum honeycomb panel increased by 1.9%~43.33%, 46.59%~179.53% and 46.26%~179.04%, respectively, compared to the bare aluminum honeycomb panel. By comparing to the sum of bare panel and bare EPP foam, the mean crushing strength and absorbed energy of EPP foam filled aluminum honeycomb panel are increased by 2%~23.5% and 3.9%~23.3%. In addition, the numerical results using the Ls-dyna software show the predicted failure mode and load-displacement curves agree well with the exprimental results, indicating that the EPP foam filling could resist the deformation of the honeycomb wall. This study indicates that aluminum honeycomb panel filled with EPP foam structure could effectively improve axial compression properties of bare aluminum honeycomb structure.

Key words: lightweight, aluminum honeycomb, EPP foam, Ls-dyna, compression characteristics