Origami-based Building Blocks for Modular Construction of Foldable Structures.

Origami, widely known as the ancient Japanese art of paper folding, has recently inspired a new paradigm of design for mechanical metamaterials and deployable structural systems. However, lack of rationalized design guidelines and scalable manufacturing methods has hindered their applications. To address this limitation, we present analytical methods for designing origami-based closed-loop units with inherent foldability, and for predicting their folding response (e.g., folding force, bistability, and area and volume change by folding). These units can be employed as building blocks for application-driven design and modular construction of foldable structures with desired performance and manufacturing scalability.

Origami-based cellular metamaterial with auxetic, bistable, and self-locking properties.

We present a novel cellular metamaterial constructed from Origami building blocks based on Miura-ori fold. The proposed cellular metamaterial exhibits unusual properties some of which stemming from the inherent properties of its Origami building blocks, and others manifesting due to its unique geometrical construction and architecture. These properties include foldability with two fully-folded configurations, auxeticity (i.e., negative Poisson's ratio), bistability, and self-locking of Origami building blocks to construct load-bearing cellular metamaterials. The kinematics and force response of the cellular metamaterial during folding were studied to investigate the underlying mechanisms resulting in its unique properties using analytical modeling and experiments.

Hierarchical honeycomb auxetic metamaterials.

Most conventional materials expand in transverse directions when they are compressed uniaxially resulting in the familiar positive Poisson's ratio. Here we develop a new class of two dimensional (2D) metamaterials with negative Poisson's ratio that contract in transverse directions under uniaxial compressive loads leading to auxeticity. This is achieved through mechanical instabilities (i.e., buckling) introduced by structural hierarchy and retained over a wide range of applied compression. This unusual behavior is demonstrated experimentally and analyzed computationally. The work provides new insights into the role of structural organization and hierarchy in designing 2D auxetic metamaterials, and new opportunities for developing energy absorbing materials, tunable membrane filters, and acoustic dampeners.

Buckling of regular, chiral and hierarchical honeycombs under a general macroscopic stress state.

An approach to obtain analytical closed-form expressions for the macroscopic 'buckling strength' of various two-dimensional cellular structures is presented. The method is based on classical beam-column end-moment behaviour expressed in a matrix form. It is applied to sample honeycombs with square, triangular and hexagonal unit cells to determine their buckling strength under a general macroscopic in-plane stress state. The results were verified using finite-element Eigenvalue analysis.