Prediction of fatigue life of a flexible foldable origami antenna with Kresling pattern

Abstract

In this paper, we present a thorough mechanical analysis of a foldable origami helical antenna using the Kresling pattern. A precise simulation is required to explicitly capture the complex motion of an origami structure during the folding process. We perform this study by employing the Finite Element Method (FEM) available in ANSYS software. First, we analyze the folding behavior of the structure with three stories. The results indicate that after the second story is folded completely, the first and third stories begin to fold. Next, we predict the fatigue life of the structure using the mean stress with fully reversed loading. We investigate the effects of several design parameters such as length ratio (b/a), height of story, total height, thickness, length and thickness ratios of creases, and radius of the circumscribed circle of polygonal on the fatigue life. We find out that the origami structure with the length ratio (b/a) of 1.9 has the highest life cycles. The results indicate that the effects of the height of the story on the life cycle depend on the length ratio (b/a). We observe that the life cycle of the origami structure improves by decreasing the thickness or increasing the radius of the circumscribed circle of hexagonal. In addition, we discover that the creases design plays an important role in the fatigue life and folding behavior of the origami structure.