Design and optimization of origami-inspired inflatable deployable tubular structures

Abstract

Inflatable deployable structures inspired by origami have significant applications in space missions such as solar arrays and antennas. In this paper, a generalized Miura-ori tubular cell (GMTC) is presented as the basic cell to design a family of inflatable origami tubular structures with the targeted configuration. First, the classification of rigid foldable degree-4 vertices is studied thoroughly. Since the proposed GMTC is comprised of forming units (FU) and linking units (LU), types of FUs and LUs are investigated based on the classification of degree-4 vertices, respectively. The rigid foldability of the GMTC is presented by studying the kinematics of the FUs and LUs. Volume of the GMTC is analyzed to investigate multistable configurations of the basic cell. The variations in volume of the GMTC offer great potential for developing the inflatable tubular structure. Design method and parametric optimization of the tubular structure with targeted configuration are proposed. The feasibility of the approach is validated by the approximation of four different cases, namely parabolic, semicircular, trapezoidal, and straight-arc hybrid tubular structures.