Inflatable origami-inspired structures

Origami has long been used as a source of inspiration to design creative and esthetic constructions, from the iconic paper swan to facades of multi-story buildings. More recently, the rules of folding have been applied to fabricate architected materials with functional properties such as compactness, self-foldability, and multi-stability. These properties highlight the potential of origami to become a new design paradigm for rapidly deployable structures. Whereas multiple origami-inspired deployable surfaces have been reported in the literature, there is a lack of research on enclosed deployable geometries. In this work, we introduce a novel type of inflatable origami-inspired structure comprised of a polyhedron with triangular faces and elastic hinges. From simple geometry principles, this star-shaped structure possesses two compatible configurations – flat-folded and deployed – giving rise to a bi-stable behavior. The insights gained from the study of this simple geometry enable the understanding of the folding principles of a novel class of enclosed origami-inspired structures that can be deployed to different stable configurations through inflation.