Tunable stiffness design of curved-crease origami and extended quasi-zero stiffness vibration isolator

Abstract A kind of origami tube based on the curved crease, which has a tunable stiffness, was designed, fabricated, tested, and extended to the concept of a quasi-zero stiffness (QZS) vibration isolator. The regulating function of crease stiffness on the overall origami stiffness without changes in the crease pattern was verified by single-crease models. With various opening ratios along the creases, three tubes composed of mirrored single-crease origami were designed, fabricated by 3D printing, and compressively tested. The test results present the potential of the approach of QZS. Further, the elastic-frictionless origami tubes were redesigned and simulated to obtain the target stiffness. The cubic term fitting of the load curve was adopted by the harmonic balance method to solve the steady-state vibration response, and then the simulation results obtained by the finite element method (FEM) were compared. The study shows that the designed elastic-frictionless isolator has a good low-frequency vibration isolation performance. The concept of the simple stiffness control method of curved-crease origami provides more practice options for high static and low dynamic stiffness systems.