Origami-inspired metamaterials hierarchical structure with tailorable crushing behavior

Abstract

• A design method of origami-inspired metamaterial hierarchical structure (OMHS) is proposed. • Origami crease patterns are beneficial to improve the crushing stability of the OMHS. • Origami folding and amplitude coefficient tailor the load-carrying capability of the OMHS. • The crushing performance of the OMHS is superior to the conventional hierarchical structure. The global bending deformation hinders the development of the thin-walled structure as an energy absorber. Therefore, a design strategy based on the origami-inspired metamaterial hierarchical structure (OMHS) is proposed to avoid the global bending deformation and improve the crushing behavior of thin-walled structures. The stable progressive deformation is formed in the crushing experiment of the OMHS, owing to the deformation following origami crease patterns. Numerical results show that the OMHS exhibits lower initial stiffness and higher load-carrying capability than conventional straight-wall hierarchical structures (CSHS). Furthermore, the mechanical advantage of the OMHS with high hierarchical order is more prominent. Specifically, the load-carrying capacity and corresponding undulation of 9th order OMHS improve by 48.95% and 121.54% than that of the CSHS, respectively. Furthermore, the crushing behavior of high-order OMHS is programmable based on geometric coefficients φ A and φ e , and thickness coefficient φ t , which positively influences the crushing stability, load-carrying capacity and energy absorption. In addition, the theoretical model is constructed to predict the crushing behavior of the OMHS efficiently. This study is looking forward to providing a novel guide to reinforce the crushing behavior of the hierarchical structure by origami-inspired metamaterial design strategy.