Design of rigid-foldable doubly curved origami tessellations based on trapezoidal crease patterns

Abstract

This paper presents a mathematical framework for the design of rigid-foldable doubly curved origami tessellations based on trapezoidal crease patterns that can simultaneously fit two target surfaces with rotational symmetry about a common axis. The geometric parameters of the crease pattern and the folding angles of the target folded state are determined through a set of combined geometric and constraint equations. An algorithm to simulate the folding motion of the designed crease pattern is provided. Furthermore, the conditions and procedures to design folded ring structures that are both developable and flat-foldable and stacked folded structures consisting of two layers that can fold independently or compatibly are discussed. The proposed framework has potential applications in designing engineering doubly curved structures such as deployable domes and folded cores for doubly curved sandwich structures on the aircraft.