Dr. Jeff Lee with a new flat-pack tube
designed by the RMIT team. Credit: Will Wright, RMIT University
Engineers
at RMIT University have designed an innovative tubular structural system that
can be packed flat for easier transport and pop up into strong building
materials. This breakthrough is made possible by a self-locking system inspired
by curved-crease origami—a technique that uses curved crease lines in paper
folding.
Lead researchers Dr. Jeff (Ting-Uei) Lee
and Distinguished Professor Mike (Yi Min) Xie, said that bamboo, which has internal structures providing natural reinforcement, inspired the
tube design.
"This self-locking system is the
result of an intelligent geometric design," said Lee, from RMIT's School
of Engineering. "Our invention is suitable for large-scale use—a panel,
weighing just 1.3 kg, made from multiple tubes can
easily support a 75 kg person."
Flat-pack tubes are already widely used
in engineering and scientific applications, such as in biomedical devices,
aerospace structures, robotics and civil construction, including pop-up
buildings as part of disaster recovery efforts.
The new system makes these tubes quicker
and easier to assemble, with the capability to automatically transform into a
strong, self-locked state.
The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Other contributors to this work include Drs Hongjia Lu, Jiaming Ma and Ngoc San Ha from RMIT's School of Engineering and Associate Professor Joseph Gattas from the University of Queensland.
New origami-inspired system turns flat-pack tube
into strong building material. Credit: Will Wright, RMIT University
"Our research not only opens
up new possibilities for innovative and multifunctional structural designs, but
it can also significantly improve existing deployable systems," said Xie,
from the School of Engineering.
"When NASA deploys solar arrays, for example, the booms used are tubes that were
packed flat before being unfurled in space," Lee said. "These tubes
are hollow, though, so they could potentially deform under certain forces in
space. With our new design, these booms could be a stronger structure."
Xie explained that their smart
algorithm enabled control over how the structure behaved under forces by
changing the tube orientations.
"With our origami-inspired innovation, flat-pack tubes are not only easy to transport, but they also become strong enough to withstand external forces when in use," Xie said. "The tube is also self-locking, meaning its strong shape is securely locked in place without the need for extra mechanisms or human intervention."
The team's invention is suitable for large-scale
use—a panel, weighing just 1.3 kg, made from multiple tubes can easily support
a 75 kg person. Credit: RMIT University
Next steps
The team will continue to improve
the design and explore new possibilities for its development.
"We aim to extend the
self-locking feature to different tube shapes and test how the tubes perform
under various forces, such as bending and twisting," Lee said. "We
are also exploring new materials and manufacturing methods to create smaller,
more precise tubes."
The team is developing tubes that
can deploy themselves for a range of applications without needing much manual
effort.
"We plan to improve our smart
algorithm to make the tubes even more adaptable and efficient for different
real-world situations," Xie said.
Source: New
origami-inspired system turns flat-pack tubes into strong building materials
(techxplore.com)
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