Self‐Reconfiguring and Stiffening Origami Tube

Abstract

Reconfigurable structures have attracted increasing attention in numerous fields, such as aerospace, biomechanical, and civil engineering, owing to their nature to reshape and readjust without altering their original architectures. However, one of the most challenging issues in designing a reconfigurable structure is to ensure a load‐bearing capacity after reconfiguration, while keeping the structural flexibility during the transformation process. Here, an origami tube that can be easily reconfigured into multiple shapes, yet offering a stiffening mechanism for load‐bearing purposes is presented. A complete set of possible configurations that a single design can be reconfigured into is mathematically identified and classified. Significant differences in their axial stiffness for various configurations are analytically and experimentally investigated. Lastly, a self‐reconfiguring and stiffening mechanism of the proposed origami tube structure made with shape memory polymer (SMP), which automatically reinforces its axial stiffness about an order of magnitude through kinematic transitions is demonstrated.

An origami-based adaptive vibration isolator with Yoshimura-patterned reconfigurable module

“…A single reconfigurable module is a thin-walled tubular structure based on the Yoshimura pattern, which is composed of isosceles triangles arranged to form a diamond pattern (Yoshimura, 1951). A recent study reported that this Yoshimurapatterned tube can be reconfigured to other geometrically feasible configurations, which reduces axial stiffness (Suh et al, 2022). The isolator proposed in this study consists of the reported Yoshimura-patterned tube, aimed to achieve both high static stiffness and suppression performance at the high-frequency by shifting the configuration on demands.…”

“…In the simplified dynamic model, k i and c i represent the axial stiffness and damping of i th reconfigurable module, respectively. Note that, the origami-based reconfigurable module composing the isolator has nonlinear static behavior under the axial loading condition (Suh et al, 2022); considering that the amplitude caused by the vibration is relatively small, however, the reconfigurable module is assumed to have a constant axial stiffness. The mass of the interlayer in between i 2 1 and i th modules is presented as m i in this model.…”

“…to conduct the bi-directional reconfiguration (i.e., Load-bearing configuration ⬄ Compliant configuration), the proposed vibration isolator concept becomes adaptive to the exposed environment by shifting its characteristics through the individual shape control of constituent modules. For the reconfigurable module, it is also reported that the module can be designed to be stable in both load-bearing and compliant configuration (Suh et al, 2022). With bi-stable characteristic, the proposed isolator concept becomes highly efficient since the isolator can maintain its current shape without the continuous actuation once it is reconfigured to show the improved performance for the subjected vibration environment.…”

Development and performance analysis of deployable reflector based on origami flasher pattern

“…Recently, origami is a folding technique that involves assigning crease patterns to sheets. The origami-inspired foldable structure has been adopted in numerous deployable structures, due to the advantages of constructing various geometrical designs [5][6][7][8][9] and easily changing mechanical properties, such as stiffness [10,11]. Several studies [12,13] have explored applying origami structure concepts to deployable reflector antennas.…”

Recessed pyramid origami module and its tessellation

“…Origami enables the transformation of a structure's shape, size, and mechanical properties by folding thin flat sheets according to systematic patterns. Utilizing these unique properties, origami is increasingly applied not only in materials, robotics, biology, and architecture but also in aerospace engineering [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Moreover, origami techniques can be applied to not just micro-scale structures but also to large-scale structures exceeding meters in size like space architecture [10,11].…”