Wereley, Choi Honored with Outstanding Technical Paper Award at CAMX 2024

Each year, the Composites and Advanced Materials Expo (CAMX) honors exceptional research from students, engineers, and industry professionals that drives the future of composites innovation. This year, out of the more than 140 papers presented at CAMX Assistant Research Scientist Young Choi and Professor Norman Wereley were recognized with a CAMX Outstanding Technical Paper Award.

The CAMX awards address critical topics in the composites and advanced materials industry, spanning business, applications, and research.

Their paper, “Quasi-static Crush of Additively Manufactured Honeycomb Structures with Buckling Initiators,” presented by Wereley, addresses a method to maximize crush efficiency in additively manufactured honeycomb structures used for energy absorption during impact events, such as a hard or crash landing of a helicopter or automobile collision.

The team accomplished this by decreasing the initial peak stress while maintaining the plateau stress via buckling initiators (BIs). BIs are perforations of varying size, shape and location in the honeycomb cell walls. When placing BIs at the top of these honeycomb walls, the team demonstrated an increase in the energy absorption efficiency of over 50%.

These energy absorbing structures could be applied to aerospace and automotive applications for occupant protection because 3D printing allows tailoring of their energy absorption characteristics as a function of body weight.

The CAMX Expo is North America’s largest composite and advanced materials industry expo and conference program, bringing together all aspects of the world’s composites and advanced materials communities.

Published October 25, 2024