Crashworthy Origami Structures

In recent decades origami folding, an art form of paper folding, has been of increasing interest to both mathematicians and engineers. Mathematicians are more interested in the geometrical aspects of origami objects such as foldability of origami patterns, especially foldability of developable surfaces. Engineers, on the other hand, are finding that traditional geometry and folding used for artistic paper models can be readily parameterised and applied to the development of new structures and devices. Since most of the sheet materials used in engineering applications are relatively rigid in comparison with paper, particular attention has been drawn on to rigid origami, a subset of origami that permit continuous motion between folded states along the pre-determined folding creases without the need for twisting or stretching of the facets. This allows the patterns to be readily manufactured from modern materials such as plastic, metal, or carbon-fibre sheets, producing patterns that are sufficiently strong and durable to be of use in large-scale applications.

The primary focus of my research is on the development of thin-walled energy absorbing structures using origami, including crash boxes and sandwich plates and shells containing origami core structures, also known as foldcores. This type of structures can be used in cars, helicopters and trains to absorb kinetic energy in case of a collision. It has been discovered that by pre-folding the surface of a thin-walled materials with particular sets of origami patterns, it is possible to alter the post-buckling failure mode, and this deformation mode could be tailored to coincide with very high energy absorption capability. For instance, the origami crash box that I developed exhibits 56% higher energy absorption ability in comparison with that of the conventional crash boxes of same weight. This approach has opened up many opportunities for developing innovative crashworthy structures.

In the lecture, I shall introduce a number of new structural concepts that have been developed by my research group. This family of structures can potentially be used in packaging, aircraft and military structures, e.g., barriers and shields, that are subjected to impact loadings.

About Professor Zhong You

Zhong You is an associate professor in the department on Engineering Science at the University of Oxford.

See website: http://www-civil.eng.ox.ac.uk/people/zy/index.html