Geometry and Mechanics of Multistable Origami Blocks

Abstract

Origami, which transforms flat sheets into three-dimensional shapes through folding patterns, has inspired the emergence of deployable systems in architecture and civil realms. Most existing origami-inspired deployable systems are based on rigid or curved-crease origami types. However, they inherently lack shape stability and require additional supports to maintain their deployed shapes. These lead to a fundamental trade-off between deployability and shape stability, which remains a major challenge for large-scale origami systems. Multistable origami, in contrast, achieves energy stability across multiple configurations during deployment. This unique characteristic enables it to maintain stable shapes even under external loads. These properties allow multistable origami to achieve both shape stability and deployability, offering high potential for self-supporting deployable systems in architectural applications. However, realizing both large-scale and structurally stable systems using a single origami faces many practical constraints. To overcome these limitations, origami block assembly has emerged as an effective approach to form global systems. This approach enables flexibility in global geometry and mechanical behaviors while offering reconfigurability. These indicate that the complementary potential of multistable origami and block assemblies can provide a promising solution. This study aims to address the challenges of applying deployable origami to large-scale architectural systems by leveraging the potential of multistable origami as modular building blocks. From a geometric standpoint, we explore design methods for stable configurations of multistable origami blocks that can align and interlock with each other. From a mechanical standpoint, we explore stiffness-controllable design methods that ensure self-supporting and load-bearing capabilities through geometric parameters.

Figures (75)

• Figure 1: (a) Origami patterns for freeforms, (Figures from tachi2009origamizing in grayscale). (b) Yoshimura pattern origami (left) and the compression loading buckling mode of cylindrical shell (right), (Figures from miura1969proposition in grayscale). (c) Torsional loading buckling mode of cylindrical shell (left top) and Kresling pattern origami (left bottom and right), (Figures from kresling2020fifth in grayscale).
• Figure 2: Architectural applications of rigid origami: (a) building facade (Figures from attia2017evaluation in grayscale), (b) acoustic ceiling system (Figures from thun2012soundspheres in grayscale), and (c) emergency shelter (Figures from lee2016geometric in grayscale).
• Figure 3: Architectural applications of curved-crease origami: (a) building facade (Figure from korner2018arch in grayscale), (b) bridge system (Figure from maleczek2020large in grayscale), and (c) pavilion (Figure from fayyad2023bending in grayscale).
• Figure 4: Architectural application concepts of multistable origami. Concepts of spatial structures with (a) deployable solids(named as Ebara Tetra), (Figures from ebara2003deployable in grayscale), (b) multistable curved origami bridge (beam) (Figures from rihaczek2022timbr in grayscale), and (c) emergency shelter (Figures from melancon2021multistable in grayscale).
• Figure 5: Overview of research objectives and the investigation workflow.