Foldable Structure With Opposite Twisting Shared Surfaces
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional foldable structures made with flexible materials like paper or thin metal plates experience non-uniform extension and contraction, leading to deformation issues that prevent the maintenance of rigid-folding deformation modes.
Innovation Solution
A foldable structure comprising two tubular structures with shared surfaces, where the twisting characteristics of one tubular structure are opposite to the other, and the propagation of fold angles is synchronized to inhibit non-uniform deformation, maintaining structural stiffness.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If flexible materials such as paper, plastic plate, and thin metal plate are used for each surface, then the structure can be manufactured easily and cost-effectively, but non-uniform extension and contraction occurs causing deformation that prevents maintenance of rigid-folding deformation mode
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies composite material structure by combining multiple surfaces (至少两个面) to form a foldable structure where the collective behavior maintains rigidity. The composite arrangement of surfaces with specific geometric relationships creates structural stiffness that prevents non-uniform deformation, allowing flexible materials to behave as rigid bodies during folding operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs curved surface geometry (曲面) in the foldable structure design. By incorporating specific curvature characteristics in the surface configuration, the structure achieves rigid-foldability where the curved geometry naturally guides uniform deformation propagation, preventing localized bending and maintaining rigid-body folding behavior even with flexible materials.
2Device complexity
If conventional foldable structure design is used, then the structure can be simple and easy to implement, but it becomes a mechanism with one degree of freedom that is rigid-foldable only when each surface is a rigid body, which cannot be maintained with flexible materials
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the foldable structure into multiple discrete surfaces (至少两个面) with defined fold lines between them. This segmentation allows each surface to maintain its shape while the fold lines accommodate deformation, enabling rigid-foldable behavior with flexible materials by localizing bending to specific hinge regions rather than across entire surfaces.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent modifies geometric parameters of the foldable structure, specifically the arrangement and configuration of fold lines and surface angles, to transform the deformation characteristics. By carefully designing these parameters, the structure achieves multi-degree-of-freedom rigid-foldability that maintains rigid-body deformation mode even when made from flexible materials, overcoming the limitation of conventional one-degree-of-freedom designs.
Data Source
AI summary
To provide a foldable structure to which stiffness is imparted so that non-uniform extension and contraction is inhibited even when each surface is formed of a flexible material, a manufacturing method and a manufacturing device of the foldable structure, and a non-transitory computer-readable computer medium storing a program. A foldable structure including at least two tubular structures in which the two tubular structures include a shared surface array which is continuous shared surfaces shared by each other, and a twisting characteristic in the shared surface array of one tubular structure is in a direction opposite to that of the twisting characteristic in the shared surface array of the other tubular structure.