PALEO: Plastically Annealed Lamina Emergent Origami

Origami is usually folded from a flat sheet of material. Folding mostly works by introduction of plastic deformation into that sheet, resulting in a permanently altered region, viz., the crease. Lamina emergent mechanisms also start by definition from the flat state, but make use of compliant elements to provide mobility by elastic deformation. We introduce a combination of origami tessellations with LEM elements that are annealed in a (partially) collapsed state and retain this shape afterwards, while still offering the elastic deformation potential in the annealed shape. A number of such Plastically Annealed Lamina Emergent Origami structures or PALEOs have been successfully designed and tested.