Accommodating Thickness in Origami-Based Deployable Arrays1

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to develop approaches to accommodate thickness in origami-based deployable arrays with a high ratio of deployed-to-stowed diameter. The origami flasher model serves as a basis for demonstrating the approach. A thickness-accommodating mathematical model is developed to describe the flasher. Practical modifications are presented for the creation of physical models and two options are proposed: allowing the panels to fold along their diagonals or applying a membrane backing with specified widths at fold-lines. The mathematical model and hardware modifications are employed to create several physical models. The results are general and apply to a range of applications. An example is provided by the application that motivated the work: a deployable solar array for space applications. The model is demonstrated in hardware as a 1/20th scale prototype with a ratio of deployed-to-stowed diameter of 9.2 (or 1.25 m deployed outer diameter to 0.136 m stowed outer diameter).

Design of three-dimensional origami structures based on a vertex approach

“…Origami, an ancient art of paper folding, has aroused considerable research interest in mathematics and engineering in recent years and has received credit for many innovative applications ranging from lightweight sandwich structures [1], to automotive safety devices [2], deployable solar panels [3], medical stents [4], foldable electronics [5,6] and mechanical metamaterials [7][8][9]. Among the current research on origami mathematics, a great majority is focused on the flat-and/or rigidfoldability problems [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], whereas origami geometric design that studies the folded configurations and/or folding mechanisms of origami structures and is fundamental to many engineering applications is still intractable.…”

Reentrant Origami-Based Metamaterials with Negative Poisson’s Ratio and Bistability

“…One good example is the usage of origami-patterns for the enhancement of structural bending rigidity for thin-walled cylindrical structures [1]. By leveraging their compactness, origami structures are also employed for space applications, such as space solar sails [2,3] and deployable solar arrays [4]. It is not surprising that biological systems exhibit origami patterns, e.g., tree leaves [5].…”

Towards developing product applications of thick origami using the offset panel technique

“…Some of the proposed applications of origami include deployable space applications (Schenk and Guest, 2011;Zirbel et al, 2013;Wu and You, 2010), nano-structure fabrication (Arora et al, 2006), robotics (Felton et al, 2014), and medical equipment (Kuribayashi et al, 2006;Francis et al, 2014). While origami's potential can be seen and even explored using traditional paper origami, many engineering applications would generally require materials with stiffness and strength.…”

“…These include methods that shift rotational axes to edges of panels (Tachi, 2011;Hoberman, 2010), mount trimmed panels onto membranes (Zirbel et al, 2013), employ spatial mechanisms at vertices (Chen et al, 2015), taper the edges of the panels (Tachi, 2011), and replace creases with a rigid link and two axes to allow folding of adjacent panels . The method used in this paper, the offset panel technique (OPT) developed by Edmondson et al (2014), preserves the kinematics of an origami model and allows a full range of motion.…”