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

该学院早期职业发展计划（Career）奖支持基础研究，以获得利用折纸折叠引起的三维多稳定性的新方法，用于工程多功能材料系统。这些材料系统可以潜在地承受机械载荷，但也执行其他任务。本研究旨在将古老的折纸艺术转化为设计多功能材料的理论框架。据设想，这些多功能折纸材料可以显著提高许多战略应用的性能和可持续性，如变形机身、自适应风力涡轮机、能量采集器和医疗设备。折纸-由于其看似无限的能力，从二维纸发展三维几何-正在成为数学家，教育家，建筑师和工程师越来越受欢迎的主题。然而，我们对它的潜力还只了解了皮毛。本研究将形成系统的方法：分析、设计、实验，全面揭示折叠三维多重稳定性的物理基础。这些物理见解将被用于创建连接，将这些稳定性特性转化为前所未有的材料功能，如按需属性编程、静态二极管效应和运动校正。研究成果也将被利用，以提高折纸作为一个有吸引力的教学工具，通过创建折纸折叠练习的书，教学工程。这项研究还将与克莱姆森发展中国家工程师项目合作，为本科生开展一个创意探究项目，设计海地的折纸紧急避难所。该项目将生产专门设计的教育工具，供其他教育工作者采用，以培养高质量的研究人员和工程师，并激励K-12学生攻读本科和研究生的STEM学习。该项目的研究成果将使新的低成本材料系统能够自适应地保护基础设施系统免受自然和人为灾害的影响，并增加来自可再生能源的能源收集。多稳定性已被用于制造许多多功能材料和结构，用于形状重构、性能自适应、振动控制和能量收集。然而，目前的系统是建立在低维的机制，如屈曲梁，其简单性严重限制了它们的整体潜力。该职业奖旨在利用折纸折叠的力学，将多稳定系统的研究推进到基本的三维领域。通过折叠的复杂形状转换可以赋予低维机制中无法获得的新的稳定性特性，包括稳定和不稳定状态的各向异性排列，稳定状态之间的不对称能量势垒，以及使用加压来消除或创建稳定平衡。该项目将制定非线性力学分析，实验验证和折痕设计方法，以利用这些稳定性特性并合成架构多功能材料系统。该项目如果成功，将开创一个三维多稳定性的新领域，包括高保真力学建模过程。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.