Fluidic origami with embedded pressure dependent multi-stability: a plant inspired innovation

Abstract

Inspired by the impulsive movements in plants, this research investigates the physics of a novel fluidic origami concept for its pressure-dependent multistability. In this innovation, fluid-filled tubular cells are synthesized by integrating different Miura-Ori sheets into a three-dimensional topological system, where the internal pressures are strategically controlled similar to the motor cells in plants. Fluidic origami incorporates two crucial physiological features observed in nature: one is distributed, pressurized cellular organization, and the other is embedded multi-stability. For a single fluidic origami cell, two stable folding configurations can coexist due to the nonlinear relationships among folding, crease material deformation and internal volume change. When multiple origami cells are integrated, additional multi-stability characteristics could occur via the interactions between pressurized cells. Changes in the fluid pressure can tailor the existence and shapes of these stable folding configurations. As a result, fluidic origami can switch between being mono-stable, bistable and multi-stable with pressure control, and provide a rapid 'snap-through' type of shape change based on the similar principles as in plants. The outcomes of this research could lead to the development of new adaptive materials or structures, and provide insights for future plant physiology studies at the cellular level.

Peristaltic locomotion without digital controllers: Exploiting multi-stability in origami to coordinate robotic motion

“…Origami mechanisms are inherently lightweight, compact, and compliant. Moreover, they can exhibit unique mechanical properties-such as auxetics, programmable nonlinear stiffness, and multi-stability [33,34,35,36,37,38,39]-due to the nonlinear kinematics of folding. Here, we choose Kresling origami as the skeleton of our peristaltic crawling robot.…”

Origami tubes with reconfigurable polygonal cross-sections

“…The popular Miura-ori pattern has inspired the development of rigid foldable origami tubes discussed in several recent articles [13,[23][24][25]28,29,33]. The cross-sections of these tubes are symmetric, with the most fundamental tube consisting of two equal symmetric Miura-ori strips placed opposite each other.…”

“…Origami tubes have a self-constraining geometry that makes them suitable for energy absorption devices [19][20][21][22]. Stacking and coupling of origami tubes into more complex geometries can lead to stiffening of the system and enhanced mechanical characteristics [11,13,23,24].…”

Lattice reconfiguration and phononic band-gap adaptation via origami folding

“…Another key feature of OS is that its scale independent geometric folding allows it to be fabricated at vastly different length scales without losing reconfigurability, making it a viable design for a range of spectral applications. Apart from the versatility and scalability, the global topology transformation, enabled by a one degree-of-freedom folding mechanism in rigid-foldable origamis, can be controlled with minimal local effort [38][39][40][41][42][43].…”