A preliminary study of the mechanical properties of auxetic cellular material consisting of re-entrant hexagonal honeycombs is presented. For different scales of the honeycombs, the finite element method (FEM) and experimental models are used to perform a parametric analysis on the effects of the Poisson’s ratio (cell angle) and the relative density (cell thickness) of honeycombs on bearing capacity and dynamic performance of the auxetic material. The analysis demonstrates that the ultimate bearing capacity of the presented auxetic cellular material is scale-independent when the Poisson’s ratio and the relative density are kept constant. The relationship between the geometric parameters and vibration level difference of the honeycombs is also revealed, which can be divided into two converse parts around the Poisson’s ratio v=−1.5. When v is smaller than −1.5, increasing the cell thickness leads to an increase in the vibration level difference of the honeycombs. Moreover, the dynamic performance of thin-walled honeycombs is greatly influenced by the scale of the honeycombs, especially for the ones with small Poisson’s ratio. These conclusions are verified by a frequency response test and a good agreement between the numerical results and experimental data is achieved.

This paper presents a preliminary study of the dynamic performance of a novel light-weight auxetic (negative Poisson’s ratio) cellular vibration isolation base constituted by reentrant hexagonal honeycombs. Numerical and experimental analyses were conducted to reveal the effects of Poisson’s ratio (cell angle) and relative density (cell thickness) of these reentrant honeycombs on the dynamic performance of this novel base and to propose design guidelines for the best use of the auxetic cellular vibration isolation system. By doing numerical analysis, we found that, by decreasing the relative density of reentrant honeycombs and increasing Poisson’s ratio of them, excellent vibration isolation performance of the auxetic cellular base will be achieved. This analysis was followed by static, modal, and frequency response tests, which verified the results of the numerical analysis.