CAREER: Leveraging the Three-Dimensional Multi-Stability from Origami Folding to Synthesize Multi-Functional Material Systems

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This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports fundamental research to derive a novel approach to harness three-dimensional multi-stability induced by origami folding for engineering multi-functional material systems. These material systems can potentially bear mechanical loads but also perform other duties. The research aims at transforming the ancient art of origami into a theoretical framework for designing multi-functional materials. It is envisioned that these multi-functional origami materials can significantly advance the performance and sustainability of many strategic applications like morphing airframes, adaptive wind turbines, energy harvesters, and medical devices. Origami folding - due to its seemingly infinite capabilities of developing 3D geometries from 2D sheets - is becoming an increasingly popular subject among mathematicians, educators, architects, and engineers. However, we are still scratching the surface of its potential. The research will formulate a systematic method: analysis, design, and experiment, to fully uncover the physics underpinning the 3D multi-stability from folding. Such physical insights will be exploited to create linkages to translate these stability properties into unprecedented material functions, such as on-demand property programming, static diode effects, and motion rectification. Research results will also be leveraged to enhance origami as an engaging teaching tool through the creation of a book of origami folding exercises for teaching engineering. The research will also lead to a Creative Inquiry project for undergraduates, in collaboration with the Clemson Engineers for Developing Countries program, on the design of origami emergency shelters in Haiti. This project will produce educational tools that are specifically designed to be adopted by other educators to train high-quality researchers and engineers as well as to motivate K-12 students to pursue undergraduate and graduate STEM study. The research outcomes of this project will enable new low-cost material systems to adaptively protect infrastructure systems from natural and man-made disasters and to increase the collection of energy from renewable sources.Multi-stability has been used to create many multi-functional materials and structures for shape reconfiguration, property adaptation, vibration control, and energy harvesting. However, current systems are built upon low dimensional mechanisms such as the buckled beams, the simplicity of which severely limits their overall potential. This CAREER award aims to leverage the mechanics of origami folding to advance the study of multi-stable systems into the fundamentally three-dimensional domain. The sophisticated shape transformations via folding can impart novel stability properties that are unavailable in the lower dimensional mechanisms, including the anisotropic arrangement of stable and unstable states, asymmetric energy barrier between stable states, and the use of pressurization to eliminate or create stable equilibria. This project will formulate nonlinear mechanics analysis, experiment validation, and crease design methodologies to harness these stability properties and synthesize architected multi-functional material systems. This project, if successful, will create a new field of three-dimensional multi-stability, including a high-fidelity mechanics modeling process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.