Toward optimization of stiffness and flexibility of rigid, flat-foldable origami structures

Origami patterns have been applied in spatial structures to make stiff shell structures as well as flexible transformable systems. Folding a planar sheet into a 3D configuration changes the stiffness and the behavior of the sheet. In this paper we discuss a scalable analytical model for simulating origami structures, and we use eigenvalue band-gaps to optimize both the flexibility and stiffness of the system. We focus our study on rigid, flat foldable tubes and investigate the influence that different parameters have on the stiffness characteristics.