Packing and deploying Soft Origami to and from cylindrical volumes with application to automotive airbags

Abstract

Packing soft-sheet materials of approximately zero bending stiffness using Soft Origami (origami patterns applied to soft-sheet materials) into cylindrical volumes and their deployment via mechanisms or internal pressure (inflation) is of interest in fields including automobile airbags, deployable heart stents, inflatable space habitats, and dirigible and parachute packing. This paper explores twofold patterns, the ‘flasher’ and the ‘inverted-cone fold’, for packing soft-sheet materials into cylindrical volumes. Two initial packing methods and mechanisms are examined for each of the flasher and inverted-cone fold patterns. An application to driver’s side automobile airbags is performed, and deployment tests are completed to compare the influence of packing method and origami pattern on deployment performance. Following deployment tests, two additional packing methods for the inverted-cone fold pattern are explored and applied to automobile airbags. It is shown that modifying the packing method (using different methods to impose the same base pattern on the soft-sheet material) can lead to different deployment performance. In total, two origami patterns and six packing methods are examined, and the benefits of using Soft Origami patterns and packing methods are discussed. Soft Origami is presented as a viable method for efficiently packing soft-sheet materials into cylindrical volumes.

Paper Origami‐Inspired Design and Actuation of DNA Nanomachines with Complex Motions

“…Our design, fabrication, and actuation approaches to self-assemble reconfigurable materials and systems whose mechanical properties can be programed and tuned via transforming individual monomers among several pre-designed configurations. These types of transforming systems have been implemented at larger scales as deployable systems [38,70,40] , robotics components [34,71] , and materials with complex mechanical behavior such as bistability or geometric stiffening [72,32,33] . Here, the higher order DNA nanostructures constructed by DNA WBBs demonstrated a new paradigm for DNA origami materials with complex higher-order shapes.…”

“…Paper origami designs incorporate strategic arrangements of folds on a two-dimensional sheet of thin material, typically paper [30,31] . These principles have been successfully applied to the design of novel materials [32,33] , foldable robots [34][35][36][37] and deployable structures [38][39][40] . This work seeks to establish a foundation to apply the design principles of shape transforming paper origami to DNA nanomachines.…”

Design of Regular One-Dimensional, Two-Dimensional, and Three-Dimensional Linkage-Based Tessellations

“…The capability to design origami-based mechanisms is inspiring useful applications [9][10][11], including spacecraft solar panels [12,13], packaging [14], efficient airbag stowage [15], shipping containers [16], deployable aerodynamic fairings [17], and optics [18]. In each case, the ability of these mechanisms to change shape and adapt to different design needs is a significant advantage.…”

A Review of Thickness-Accommodation Techniques in Origami-Inspired Engineering

“…Connections between origami artists advanced the complexity and realism of the art, but more significantly, there arose connections between origami and mathematics, sciences, and engineering, which have led to the adoption of origami structures and mechanisms in a wide range of technical fields [2][3][4][5]. Structures and mechanisms, both adapted and inspired from origami, have found applications as diverse as acoustics [6][7][8], active structures [9], air bags [10][11][12][13], batteries [14][15][16][17], deployable shelters [18][19][20][21][22][23], DNA [24][25][26][27][28], energy absorption [29][30][31][32], foldcore sandwich panels [33][34][35][36], medical devices [37][38][39][40][41][42], MEMS devices [43][44][45][46][47]…”