Free vibration and sound transmission properties of beetle elytron plate: structural parametric analysis

Honeycomb plate (HP), which is a high-strength and lightweight structure, has good vibration characteristics, while beetle elytron plate (BEP) has better mechanical properties. To promote the engineering application of BEPs, the vibration and sound transmission characteristics of aluminium BEPs were investigated in this paper with HP as the comparison object. This paper investigated the effects of the number of trabeculae, the ratio of length and width, skin thickness, core height and core thickness on the first 4 frequencies using finite element method. The results show that (1) the vibration characteristic of BEP is optimal when the number of trabeculae is 6, and its 3rd and 4th modes show mixed mode, i.e., torsion-bending or bending-torsion mode. (2) The frequencies of BEPs are generally lower than those of HPs. Compared with HPs, the ratio of length and width and core thickness have a smaller influence on the mode shapes of BEPs, and the core height has a smaller influence on BEPs’ frequencies. When the skin thickness is small, increasing the thickness can effectively change the natural frequencies of BEPs and HPs. (3) Considering the common frequencies of four applications (aircrafts, unmanned aerial vehicles, high-speed trains and automobiles) of sandwich plates, the effects of the abovementioned parameters including the ratio of length and width, skin thickness, core height and core thickness are analysed. (4) Combined with the theoretical calculation formula, the effect of the above structural parameters on the sound transmission characteristic is explored using the index of sound transmission loss, and targeted recommendations are given. This paper progresses the application in engineering.