Origami-based tunable truss structures for non-volatile mechanical memory operation

Abstract

Origami has recently received significant interest from the scientific community as a method for designing building blocks to construct metamaterials. However, the primary focus has been placed on their kinematic applications by leveraging the compactness and auxeticity of planar origami platforms. Here, we present volumetric origami cells—specifically triangulated cylindrical origami (TCO)—with tunable stability and stiffness, and demonstrate their feasibility as non-volatile mechanical memory storage devices. We show that a pair of TCO cells can develop a double-well potential to store bit information. What makes this origami-based approach more appealing is the realization of two-bit mechanical memory, in which two pairs of TCO cells are interconnected and one pair acts as a control for the other pair. By assembling TCO-based truss structures, we experimentally verify the tunable nature of the TCO units and demonstrate the operation of purely mechanical one- and two-bit memory storage prototypes.

Numerical simulation of stable propagation of mechanical signals by cylindrical origami

“…A cylindrical origami pair is symmetrical and has two stable states. Using this property, the cylindrical origami pair has been successfully used as nonvolatile memory [6]. It is known that the elastic energy generated by the expansion and storage of the cylindrical origami can be calculated by the truss model [7].…”

Tunable Frequency Band Structure of Origami-Based Mechanical Metamaterials

“…To obtain the dynamic folding motion of the TCO unit cell, we introduce a truss-like structure (see Fig. 2) [13,14]. Note that the original TCO model is shown in Fig.…”

“…In this study, we break the stereotype conception of origami and attempt to employ it as a medium to support the propagation of mechanical waves. Specifically, we approximate the TCO structures into a network of elastic spring elements to suppress the effect of the planar deformation of their facets, while preserving the key features of the TCO cells (see [13] for the validity of this model and its prototypes). For dynamic analysis, we start with modeling a unit cell of the TCO into a two degreeof-freedom (DOF) structure that features axial and torsional motions under perturbations.…”

Mechanical anisotropy of two-dimensional metamaterials: a computational study

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6] The unique properties of these materials, e.g. negative Poisson's ratio, 5,7,8 superior mechanical performance [9][10][11] and structural reconguration, [12][13][14] are usually dominated by their structure, although the inuence of their composition cannot be neglected either. Among candidates for constituents of metamaterials, two-dimensional materials with one-atom thickness have attracted signicant interest due to their unique physical and chemical properties.…”