Designing origami tessellations composed of quadrilateral meshes and degree-4 vertices for engineering applications

Abstract

Origami-based designs have been successfully adopted to solve engineering problems at different scales of application. This article proposes a method for designing origami tessellations composed of quadrilateral meshes and degree-4 vertices. Crease patterns are generated starting from base units to which are applied tailored generation functions. The theoretical framework is further implemented in a parametric design workflow and automated with the aid of an Interactive Evolutionary Algorithm (IEA). The proposed workflow is a flexible tool that could be applied to design and analyse both rigid and non-rigid foldable origami patterns. The design domain could be investigated without pre-defined design goals and with the support of user-defined performance values.