A Novel Radially Closable Tubular Origami Structure (RC-ori) for Valves

Abstract

Cylindrical Kresling origami structures are often used in engineering fields due to their axial stretchability, tunable stiffness, and bistability, while their radial closability is rarely mentioned to date. This feature enables a valvelike function, which inspired this study to develop a new origami-based valve. With the unique one-piece structure of origami, the valve requires fewer parts, which can improve its tightness and reduce the cleaning process. These advantages meet the requirements of sanitary valves used in industries such as the pharmaceutical industry. This paper summarizes the geometric definition of the Kresling pattern as developed in previous studies and reveals the similarity of its twisting motion to the widely utilized iris valves. Through this analogy, the Kresling structure’s closability and geometric conditions are characterized. To facilitate the operation of the valve, we optimize the existing structure and create a new crease pattern, RC-ori. This novel design enables an entirely closed state without twisting. In addition, a simplified modeling method is proposed in this paper for the non-rigid foldable cylindrical origami. The relationship between the open area and the unfolded length of the RC-ori structure is explored based on the modeling method with a comparison with nonlinear FEA simulations. Not only limited to valves, the new crease pattern could also be applied to microreactors, drug carriers, samplers, and foldable furniture.

Rigid-foldable cylindrical origami with tunable mechanical behaviors

“…Filipov assembled various Miura origami tubes to create a metamaterial that can be deployed, stiffened, and tuned 18 . A radially closable structure (RC-ori), a modified form of Kresling origami with crease lines, has also been proposed 19 . Adding incisions on the creases of Kresling origami significantly reduced the bistable actuation force during compression 20 .…”

Directed Instability as a Mechanism for Fabricating Multistable Twisting Microstructure

“…[32,33] The potential of the pattern extends even to the fields of energy absorption [34,35] and harvesting, [36,37] and it has been found that geometrical configuration can enhance the design and performance of the structure. [38,39] Other applications span pneumatic and wave manipulators, [40,41] mechanical binary switches, [42] helical antennas, [43] design and control, [44,45] biometric identity recognition, [46] multimodal locomotion, [47] electricity generator, [48] enhanced vibration isolation, [49] origami-based valve, [50] and origami springs. [51] Except the Kresling origami, an additional multistable (noninflatable) twisting meta-structure was proposed by Pan et al [52] based on the first buckling mode shape of a clamped-pinned beam.…”

Kresling origami derived structures and inspired mechanical metamaterial

“…In our previous work [20], the tristable property of the Kresling origami was proposed on the cylindrical and conical structures. Ye et al [21] optimized the Kresling origami to obtain the radial closability, the valley creases within the unit cells are not connected to the vertices of the top (bottom) polygon. Liu et al [22] integrated the concept of Kirigami to split the unit cells of the Kresling origami, realizing rigid foldability, bistability, opposite chirality, and etc.…”