Energy absorption behavior of origami bellows under tension

Thin-walled tubes with origami patterns exhibit good energy absorption capacity under axial tension. In this study, the tensile behavior of thin-walled tubes with pleated patterns, known as origami bellows, was first systematically investigated. A parametric study was performed to assess the impact of origami patterns and wall thicknesses on the energy absorption performance and deformation mechanism of origami bellows. The experimental and numerical results showed that a desirable tensile process without excessive initial peak force, followed by a stable and high plateau force, can be obtained. The non-rigid deployment mechanism of origami bellows under tension is observed. The specific energy absorption of the origami bellows increases as the unit width decreases provided that the value of the unit width is less than a critical value. The mean tensile force increased with the pre-folding angle, with a maximum increase of 16% in the cases studied, and increased as the wall thickness increased to a power of 1.67. This study provides a new avenue for constructing an energy absorber with good energy-absorption performance under tensile loading.