Zigzag-base Folded Sheet Cellular Mechanical Metamaterials

Abstract: The Japanese art of turning flat sheets into 3D intricate structures, origami, has inspired design of mechanical metamaterials. Mechanical metamaterials are artificially engineered materials with uncommon properties. Miura-ori is a remarkable origami folding pattern with metamaterial properties and a wide range of applications. In this study, by dislocating the zigzag strips of a Miura-ori pattern along the joining ridges, we create a class of one-degree of freedom (DOF) cellular mechanical metamaterials. The resulting configurations are based on a unit cell in which two zigzag strips surround a hole with a parallelogram cross section. We show that dislocating zigzag strips of the Miura-ori along the joining ridges, preserves and/or tunes the outstanding properties of the Miura-ori. The introduced materials are lighter than their corresponding Miura-ori sheets due to the presence of holes in the patterns. Moreover, they are amenable to similar modifications available for Miura-ori which make them appropriate for a wide range of applications.