Combining origami with 3D printing technology
University of Michigan Aerospace Engineering Department, Composite Structures Lab (CSL) & Stamps School of Art and Design
Link to Acta Astronautica paper
Traditional deployable structures use motors, actuators, and batteries to deploy solar panels and reflectors once the satellite is in space. After deployment, these mechanisms serve no purpose and take up vital space and weight. This is where our design comes in. Recent advances in 3D printing allow us to design a hinge that uses multi material mechanisms to store strain energy when folded and use that energy to self deploy.
Why Origami?
Origami has been always been the origin of design for deployable structures. Origami and paper folding allow us to pack a large surface area of material into the smallest space possible. The video on the right demonstrates the folding pattern used in the Super Flyer Unit as well as many other deployable space structures.
Super Flyer Unit Satellite
Next Generation Materials
Additive manufacturing paired with material science opens the doors for designers and engineers to utilize a wide range of materials with varying properties. Advances in 3D printing technology allows us to mix these materials into one monolithic structure.
Our hinge design uses a flexible material with ideal mechanical properties which allows for numerous deployment cycles before any material fatigue failure occurs.
The video on the right demonstrates a material similar to the one we are using in our hinge structures.
Unidirectional Hinges, Miura Ori and Design Methodology
Unidirectional Hinge Design
Our hinge design allows for tunable deployable properties while maintaining strength and reliability.
Miura Ori Pattern
This pattern is the benchmark for deployable structures in space. It compacts to an extremely small space and deploys reliably.
Unit Cell Design
A unit cell is a piece of a larger pattern that can be repeated in all directions. This is the unit cell for a Miura Ori pattern and contains three valley folds and one mountain fold.
Hinge in Unit Cell
We can superimpose our hinge design into the unit cell of a Miura Ori patten which shows our hinge compatibility with existing and popular deployable structures.
Demonstration of Our Hinges in a Deployable Structure Unit Cell
This demonstration shows the deployment of a Miura Ori Unit Cell using four unidirectional hinges. The preference for unidirectional hinges versus bidirectional hinges is based on the need to control which direction the folds deploy in. This shows that our design can be tessellated into a larger Miura Ori pattern as well as any other origami deployable structure design
An example of Miura Ori’s deployment stages.
Material layout in the Miura Ori unit cell
Ongoing research
Our research is still investigating different manufacturing methods and space grade materials to use in our proposed hinge designs. Testing and categorizing mechanical properties is paramount to understand how these structures store energy and then use it to self deploy.
Other areas of research we are interested in are different designs for deployable patterns, impact absorption devices, mechanical devices, auxetic structures, optimized structures and meta-materials that all take inspiration from paper folding and origami.