12 NASA Tech Briefs, January 2014

Origami-Inspired Folding of Thick, Rigid PanelsHinges are used to achieve the necessary folding.NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

To achieve power of 250 kW orgreater, a large compression ratio ofstowed-to-deployed area is needed.Origami folding patterns were used toinspire the folding of a solar array toachieve synchronous deployment; how-ever, origami models are generally cre-ated for near-zero-thickness material.Panel thickness is one of the main chal-lenges of origami-inspired design.

Three origami-inspired folding tech-niques (flasher, square twist, and mapfold) were created with rigid panelsand hinges. Hinge components areadded to the model to enable foldingof thick, rigid materials. Origami mod-els are created assuming zero (or nearzero) thickness. When a material with

finite thickness is used, the panels arerequired to bend around an increas-ingly thick fold as they move away fromthe center of the model. The two ap-proaches for dealing with materialthickness are to use membrane hingesto connect the panels, or to add panelhinges, or hinges of the same thick-ness, at an appropriate width to enablefolding.This work was done by Brian P. Trease,

Mark W. Thomson, Deborah A. Sigel, andPhillip E. Walkemeyer of Caltech; ShannonZirbel and Larry Howell of Brigham YoungUniversity; and Robert Lang of LangOrigami for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab -oratory.Further information is contained in aTSP (see page 1). NPO-48861

A Membrane Backing enables the folding of asix-sided origami flasher with rigid panels.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140002353 2019-02-03T03:57:48+00:00Z