Supporting Information

Natural reed stem exhibits excellent lateral bending resistance under strong wind. In this study, the reed stem is investigated and found to have a microscopic structural characteristic of graded multi-cell pores in transverse section and multiple partitions in longitudinal section by scanning electron microscope. The combination of these graded pores and multiple partitions is found to be the key factor of enhancing its lateral bending resistance. However, the traditional honeycomb performs poorly in lateral energy absorption and is difficult to be practically applied in lateral impact resistance. Therefore, inspired by the structure of reed stem which has high lateral mechanical property, a novel reed-inspired honeycomb is proposed by imitating the microstructural features of the reed stem. Meanwhile, the lateral energy absorption performance of the reed-inspired honeycomb is studied by the experiment together with the numerical simulation. The experimental and numerical results demonstrate that the reed-inspired honeycomb owns significantly excellent lateral energy absorption capacity. Especially, the investigation result shows that the lateral energy absorption of the reed-inspired honeycomb is 75.48% higher than that of the traditional honeycomb with the same weight. The novel reed-inspired honeycomb provides new inspiration for the design of material and structure with high lateral energy absorption capacity.