Applications of Origami 1

Running Head: APPLICATIONS OF ORIGAMI

Real Life Applications of Origami

Thomas E. Ames

Glen Allen High School

 Applications of Origami 2

Introduction

Origami was introduced to Japan by Chinese monks around the year 105 A.D., and was

only for the wealthy as paper was a luxury. Origami is the art of paper folding and it gained

popularity as a toy and art form during the nineteenth century. By the 1930s Akira Yoshizawa

created a language of arrows and lines, allowing origami patterns to be shared across any

community. The standardization of the origami language accelerated the growth and popularity

of origami. Origami has also grown more and more complicated as mathematics has been

applied to it (Gould, 2008). Engineers and scientists have also found origami and its’ principles

useful for creating solutions to a wide variety of real world problems. The uses of origami and

misconception that origami is just for kids has lead me to research how origami is being used to

improve life and its potential in the future. My research has found that origami is being used by

the medical field, to improve the safety of cars, and to improve space travel.

Medical

Origami is very useful in the medical field. One such application has been pioneered by

researchers at BYU where they have designed new surgical clamps using principles of origami to

reduce their size. The new clamps can fit through an incision of 3mm due to the ability of

origami to decrease the need for multiple joints and wires needed to open and close the tool

(Hollingshead, 2016). The BYU researchers see these smaller and smaller tools as the future of

surgery allowing surgeons “one day manipulating things as small as nerves” (Hollingshead,

2016).

Origami DNA has so much potential to improve life in the future. Before scientists could

only manipulate 150 pairs of a DNA sequence. But Paul Rothemund found a way to fold a 7,000

pair sequence from a virus into desired shapes. By folding the DNA scientists are able to
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manipulate more complex DNA and the origami principles act as scaffolding for the DNA

building blocks. The tedious DNA engineering is very time consuming Rothemund says that the

advances in origami DNA is “like being able to bake a cake and not pay attention to the

ingredient ratios” (Sanderson, K., 2010). This technique has the possibility to solve a problem

scientists have been trying to solve for many years, how to make a synthetic leaf that can turn

water into hydrogen fuel (Sanderson, 2010).

Safety

Origami crash boxes can be used in cars to increase their safety during a collision. Cars

normally use square or circular tubes in their bumpers to absorb some of the kinetic energy in the

event of a crash. By applying origami, the energy absorption of these tubes when used in car

bumpers can reduce the forces a driver experiences during a crash and potentially save lives. The

tubes have engineered creases that will fold when a large enough force is applied increasing the

amount of kinetic energy that is changed to thermal energy. The origami beams have “a new

failure mode, referred to as the complete diamond mode, can be triggered, and both over 50%

increase in the mean crushing force and about 30% reduction in the peak force can be achieved”

(Ma, 2013). By introducing folds engineers can guide how the beam is crushed. The traditional

beams “require a great deal of energy to be crushed” while the origami beams can be easily

folded in a desired pattern that will have a “extensive material plastic deformation” and thus

higher energy absorption (Ma, 2013). The beams are folded from a two dimensional material

such as metal where the desired lines for creases have a reduced thickness allowing buckling

along the desired pattern (Yan et al., 2016).

Sandwich panels have also been found to have increased energy absorption. These panels

are comprised of two end pieces with a folded core with an accordion like structure in the
 Applications of Origami 4

middle. Sandwich structures have been proven to absorb more energy than traditional equal mass

single layer structures (Kivivali, 2017). By changing the fold pattern of the inside sandwich

structure, the properties of the panels can be tailor made to a specific need. These panels can be

used by the military under their vehicle to help save lives in the event of a bomb going off under

their vehicle (Schenk, Guest, 2013).

Professors at BYU created a new bullet proof shield that folds down to be compact and

light weight. It is able to be unfolded and deployed in just 5 seconds. The traditional barriers

used by the police are unwieldy and tough to get into place. The new shields consist of 12 layers

of Kevlar and are only 55 pounds while the old shields are 100 pounds. The shield can also stop

a wide variety of common handgun calibers such as “9mm, .357 magnum and. 44 magnum”

(Hollingshead,2017). This application of origami is useful since the way it improves life is so

obvious.

Space

One of the first uses of Origami in the real world was in solar arrays on satellites. An

origami fold designed for a satellite call the Miura fold allows an 82 feet long array to be folded

to 9 feet in diameter. This fold was first used in 1995 and it is especially useful since the fold

allows the solar array to be deployed by pulling on one end in just one continuous motion. The

ease at which the panels can be opened cuts down on the need for complex machinery that would

increase the weight of the project or possibility for a malfunction. NASA sees this technology as

one-day enabling power plants made of multiple solar arrays, that require “no astronaut

assembly” since the panels can simply unfold (Landau, 2014).

Origami is being used to make robots finding value for its cost effectiveness, and its

utility. The traditional way of making robots such as just assembling the parts as opposed to
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folding the parts from one sheet of material is much more expensive and time consuming. The

origami robots are made from a 2-D sheet from a material such as a laminate and folded into a 3-

D robot. Since “These robots also have the potential to be converted back to planar form” they

will be easy to store and cut down on the space needed to transport them (Onal, Wood, & Rus,

2011). This design technique can also cut down on weight since the folding allows for hollow

but strong structures. Researchers envision using these robots in the future for education, disaster

relief, assisting those with decreased mobility, or in space where weight and storage will need to

be optimized. These robots could also be manufactured on a Nano scale or even larger allowing a

wide variety of uses (Onal, Tolley, Wood, & Rus, 2016).

New Types of Origami

All of the uses for origami I have described above are what is called rigid origami. Rigid

origami is origami made with un-stretchable material. Researchers have looked to nature to

“imagine that you have a piece of paper and you try to stretch it, and you store some energy

there. That stretching creates bistabilities” (Arrieta, 2018). The primary inspiration comea from

an insect of all places, more specifically from the Earwig’s wing. This insect can unfold its wings

with little needed energy to a size ten time larger than when they were folded. The wings have

two equilibrium points or points were the wings are stable and unmoving one point when the

wings are folded and one when they are unfolded. André Studart the co-author of the paper

“Bioinspired spring origami” describes these wings folding process like that of “the slap

bracelets, popular in the 1980s” (Hamers, 2018). What gives the Earwig’s wings this rare

property is that stretching and folding of the material. Researchers have named this type of

origami “spring” origami where the material can fold and unfold without the need for someone
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of something actually fold it. Self-folding material have unending potential in self-folding heart

stents, satellite sails and much more (Arrieta, 2018).

Conclusion

Brian Trease a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs said it best, "You

think of it as ancient art, but people are still inventing new things, enabled by mathematical

tools" (Landau, 2014). This quote drives my research as I want to prove the origami is much

more useful than most people know. Origami has been applied to real world problems for over

40 years and there are many undiscovered possibilities, as time goes on Origami will gain

importance and the need to recognize its significance is growing.

Research List

Arrieta, A. (2018). Origami folds of insect wing can help improve machine functions. Retrieved

from www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/origami-folds-of-insect-wing-can-

help-improve-machine-functions.html

Gould, L. (2008). Between The Folds. Retrieved from

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/between-the-folds/history.html.

Hamers, L. (2018). Earwigs take origami to extremes to fold their wings. Retrieved from

www.sciencenews.org/article/earwigs-take-origami-extremes-fold-their-wings.

Hollingshead, T. (2016). Tiny origami-inspired devices opening up new possibilities

for minimally-invasive surgery. Retrieved from https://news.byu.edu/news/tiny-origami-

inspired-devices-opening-new-possibilities-minimally-invasive-surgery

Hollingshead, T. (2017). BYU Engineers Built A Bulletproof Origami Shield To Protect Law

Enforcement. Retrieved from https://news.byu.edu/news/byu-researchers-built-bullet-

proof-origami-shield-protect-law-enforcement.
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Kivivali, L., (2017). Return to the fold for super-strong structures. Retrieved from

atechxplore.com/news/2017-06-super-strong.html

Landau, E. (2014). Solar Power, Origami-Style. Retrieved from

https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/origami-style-solar-power-20140814.

Onal, C.D., Tolley, D., Wood, R.J., and Rus, D. (2014). “Origami-inspired printed robots,”

Mechatronics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on, vol. PP, no. 99, pp. 1–8.

Onal, C.D., Wood, R.J. Rus, D. (2011). Towards printable robotics: Origami-inspired planar

fabrication of three-dimensional mechanisms. MIT Open Access Articles.

Schenk, M., Guest, S.D., (2013). Geometry of Miura-folded metamaterials. Proc. Natl. Acad.

Sci. U.S.A. 110,3276–3281.

Yan, Z., Zhang, F., Wang, J., Liu, F., Guo, X., Nan, K., … Rogers, J. A. (2016). Controlled

mechanical buckling for origami-inspired construction of 3D microstructures in advanced

materials. Advanced Functional Materials, 26(16), 2629–2639.

http://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.201504901