Effects of perforated creases on the mechanical behavior and fatigue life of thick origami structures

Abstract

Perforating crease lines has been widely adopted as a practical method for achieving thickness accommodation in designing engineering origami structures. In a previous work, we proposed a perforated crease design with three rows of oblong holes that induces smooth folding behavior of thick origami sheets and improves their mechanical properties. Here we further investigate the effects of this configured crease design on the mechanical behavior and fatigue life of 3D origami tubular structures, including the Bellow, Yoshimura, horizontally-symmetric Kresling, and inclinedly-symmetric Kresling origami tubes. We utilize Rhino/Grasshopper to develop a parametric modeling framework for the studied origami structures based on their respective geometric relationships. An origami model with or without perforated creases can be efficiently established by adjusting input parameters in the modeling framework. Then, finite element analysis is adopted to assess folding behavior and mechanical properties of the structures, and to predict their fatigue life combined with FE-SAFE. The results show that the perforated crease can alleviate the issue of panel interference, resulting in smooth folding behavior of origami structures. Although the mechanical responses are weakened due to perforations, the fatigue life of the structures is significantly enhanced by an order of magnitude. We therefore expect that the perforated crease design with three rows of oblong holes can be applied to engineering origami structures.