Origami in aerospace engineering. Beautiful and practical.
However, it is not only space engineering that uses origami. Engineers have used it for inspiration for all types of applications, from medical devices (tiny tools that unfold bigger in the body) to space applications (like this video) and even stopping bullets (folded Kevlar for rapid deployment)
Origami, literally 'folding paper', dates back at least 400 years in Japan , but the number of designs was limited. There were only a handful of patterns.
Nowadays, tens of thousands have been documented, and most of that change happened in the 20th century.
But why is this ancient art of paper folding so useful for modern engineering?
It is useful in engineering because it provides a method of taking a flat sheet of material and forming it into virtually any shape by folding, or if the end product is flat, origami offers a way to reduce its dimensions while still deploying easily.
An intrinsic benefit of origami is that folding a material can make it more rigid. However, the more common challenge for engineering applications is folding thick, rigid materials. This can be done with surrogate folds to replace the creases and adding hinges as necessary.
So, if we can fold thick and rigid material, only the imagination limits what shapes and applications we can create.
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