Design of an individual vertex actuator and its use in understanding the effect of constraint location on Miura-Ori folding behavior

Abstract

The Miura-Ori fold is an origami pattern that can translate from a flat sheet to a compact folded state with a single degree of freedom. Currently little is understood about the relationship between the physical properties of the miura-ori lattice and its folding behavior. The objective of this thesis was to design an actuation setup to quantify the effect of individual vertex actuation and constraint on the adherence of folding behavior to an idealized model. The setup constrains specific vertices to the x/y plane while actuating other vertices along their ideal paths as specified by the idealized geometric model. The minimum number of constraints needed to drive a unit cell miura ori pattern into the folded state was found to be two, adjacent to the center actuator. This rule was also found to be applicable to larger lattice sizes. In addition, the adherence of each node path to the predicted ideal path was found to improve as the number of constraints increased. Several improvements to the setup that would enable further exploration of miura-ori behavior are suggested.