Lightweight origami isolators with deployable mechanism and quasi-zero-stiffness property

Efficient vibration isolation is an important problem in engineering. Nonlinear isolators with quasi-zero-stiffness (QZS) property have been studied for many years due to their beneficial vibration isolation performance. However, such isolators are typically undeployable, as well as large and heavy in many cases, while designing a structure that is deployable and lightweight is required for many practical applications, especially for aerospace engineering. Origami has recently found their application in various research areas, including engineering. This ancient art of paper folding can be used to construct novel nonlinear isolators that can overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the previously proposed isolators. In this work, a lightweight nonlinear vibration isolator with deployable mechanism and QZS property is proposed by using the Kresling origami modules (KOMs). The QZS property is achieved by utilizing the supercritical pitchfork bifurcation, which provides theoretical foundation to guide the design of such an isolator. The QZS KOMs with automatic deployment mechanism and the conditions under which the isolator can be fully folded are investigated. Subsequently, by establishing the dynamic model of the isolator, the response of the proposed isolator under base's excitation is obtained by using the averaging method and validated by the simulation of a virtual truss prototype in ADAMS. For the validated model, parametric studies are performed to understand the effects of various design parameters and arrangements (series and parallel) on the vibration isolation performance of the proposed isolator, while an ultra-low frequency vibration isolation and, for some cases, vibration isolation covering the full frequency range are shown to be present for the system. Remarkably, the performance of the proposed isolator is significantly enhanced by connecting the KOMs in series. With the developed theoretical framework and findings from this work, it is demonstrated that origami provides a new way to design effective nonlinear QZS isolators suitable for aerospace applications.