Composite structures sandwiched with lightweight cellular materials have been extensively used in aeronautics, automotive, marine, and civil engineering applications, while the low-density lightweight cellular core contributes to their multiple functionalities
[6]. Honeycomb materials are the main class of artificial cellular materials whose geometries can be readily parameterized, and they are usually characterized by a tessellation of an array of periodic unit cells to fill a planar area or 3D space as a sandwiched core
[7]. The physical characteristics of honeycomb materials are governed by the geometry of their unit cells and can thus be flexibly changed, such as Poisson's ratio, elastic modulus, bulk modulus, and coefficient of thermal expansion
[8], etc. Among them, the Poisson's ratio can be tuned to possess not merely the positive Poisson's ratio (PPR) that widely exists in nature but negative or zero values, and the honeycombs that exhibit negative or zero Poisson's ratios (NPR and ZPR) typically belong to mechanical metamaterials. In accord with the definition of the Poisson's ratio, the NPR or "auxetic" metamaterial exhibits lateral expansion instead of contraction when stretched under uniaxial loading, while the ZPR one yields no transverse deformation under unidirectional tensile or compressive loading. Furthermore, the former possesses superior mechanical properties such as enhanced shear resistance, indentation resistance, and fracture toughness
[9],
[10],
[11], while the latter has been specially recommended on aircraft morphing skins without double curvatures under out-of-plane bending moments
[12]. On the one hand, three well-established auxetic microstructures have been identified to distinguish NPR metamaterials based on their deformation mechanisms
[13], including re-entrant, chiral
[14], and rotating-rigid
[15] ones. The most frequently reported re-entrant structures among these configurations are characterized as "direct inward" or featuring a negative angle, and their deformations are dominated by the realignment of their hinged cell ligaments. A variety of re-entrant honeycomb configurations have been proposed and investigated, such as re-entrant hexagons
[8], arrowheads
[16], lozenge and square grids
[17], and star systems
[18]. On the other hand, the ZPR metamaterials have been paid increasing attention in recent years and can be categorized into two main types: compliance in one direction and two directions
[19]. The former contains the accordion design with solid strips connected by bending hexagonal ligaments
[20], accordion topology with chevron bending ligaments
[21], and modified semi re-entrant design
[22], while the latter includes semi re-entrant
[23],
[24],
[25],
[26], AuxHex
[27], SILICOMB
[28], star-shaped
[29] and cross-circular ZPR honeycombs
[30]. Among these ZPR configurations, the semi-re-entrant honeycomb is a classic type that has drawn considerable concern since it is directly constituted by combining halves of the regular hexagonal PPR honeycomb and the re-entrant hexagonal NPR honeycomb.