DIGITAL DESIGN AND MODEL VERIFICATION OF MIURA ORIGAMI METAMATERIAL STRUCTURES

Origami-inspired structures have bright engineering applications in many fields, such as aerospace engineering, flexible electronics, automobile, ships, and building structures. Miura origami metamaterial structures can be constructed by expanding the classic Miura origami patterns along three directions. Such structures possess the characteristics of high porosity, self-locking, flat folding, negative Poisson's ratio and programmable morphology. In order to better apply these metamaterials into energy-absorbing structures and deployable structures, this study introduces Matlab and Grasshopper to further improve the digital design method of Miura-ori metamaterial structures. Notably, digital modeling technology and 3D printing technology have been adopted to achieve unified modeling for zero-thickness origami models and non-zero-thickness three-dimensional origami models. Furthermore, a series of physical models are constructed for verification. Then, the advantages and disadvantages of using 3D printing technology to make origami metamaterial structural models have been discussed. On the basis of geometric parameters, analytical expressions for the crease length, relative density, and folding ratio of a Miura-ori metamaterial have been established. Abaqus/Explicit was used to analyze and verify the quasi-static compression process of these origami structures, and the influence law of relative density on the energy absorption index was revealed. The results show that the digital design method of metamaterial structure is efficient and accurate, which is convenient for structural selection and further optimization analysis. The obtained results from 3D printed models are in good agreements with the theoretical values. When panel configuration, thickness and crease length remain unchanged, the Miura origami metamaterial structure with a relatively lower density tends to exhibit better energy absorption efficiency.