Andres Arrieta’s Post [Video]

Origami offers the unique opportunity to bring together art, biology, mathematics, and engineering. In our recent paper led by Clark Addis on “Connecting the branches of multistable non-Euclidean origami by crease stretching,” we show how #bioinspired extensible creases allow for accessing folding regimes not available with traditional origami. Localizing flexibility to the creases is particularly relevant for providing freer folding paths to Non-Euclidean #origami systems with rigid facets, which allows the use of inextensible materials such as semiconductors. Non-Euclidean origami is a promising technique for designing multistable deployable structures folded from nonplanar developable surfaces. The impossibility of flat foldability inherent to non-Euclidean origami results in two disconnected solution branches each with the same angular deficiency but opposite handedness. We show that these regions can be connected via “crease stretching,” wherein the creases exhibit extensibility in addition to torsional stiffness. We further reveal that crease stretching acts as an energy storage method capable of passive deployment and control. Specifically, we show that in a #Miura-Ori system with a single stretchable crease, this is achieved via two unique, easy to realize, equilibrium folding pathways for a certain wide set of parameters. In particular, we demonstrate that this connection mostly preserves the stable states of the non-Euclidean system, while resulting in a third stable state enabled only by the interaction of crease torsion and stretching. Finally, we show that this simplified model can be used as an efficient and robust tool for inverse design of multistable origami based on closed-form predictions that yield the system parameters required to attain multiple, desired stable shapes. This facilitates the implementation of multistable origami for applications in architecture materials, robotics, and deployable structures. Big thanks to Salvador Rojas for his contribution to this work. We gratefully acknowledge support from AB InBev, the George Washington Carver Fellowship, and the #Purdue Winkelman Fellowship for supporting this work. https://lnkd.in/gSdfi5ja