Modeling and Analysis of Origami Impact Absorbers

Abstract

________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: The Japanese art of paper folding called origami has underlying principles that can help in the development of complex metamaterial structures. The purpose of the paper is to design, model, and analyze a feasible, more sustainable impact absorbing structure. There has been continuous development in the field of space science and aerodynamics, which has led us to encounter a lot of challenges. One of such challenges is smooth landing of objects. We started by creating tessellations with the help of Miura ori fold to get a repeating structure of the TCO (Triangulated Cylindrical Origami) with an aim to create a general-purpose design for Impact absorbing applications. A comparison between origami TCO’s sheets, hexagonal sandwich sheets, and cardboard corrugated sheets was made. The TCO cells are better at absorbing energy absorption due to their physical structure. The result shows that the Origami TCO sheets exceed the traditional honeycomb and corrugated sheets. As the model we developed is a general-purpose design, it can be upscaled or downscaled depending on its required application, which can range from nano technology to space technology.