Folding Behavior of a Foldable Prismatic Mast With Kresling Origami Pattern

The folding behavior of a prismatic mast based on Kresling origami pattern is studied in this paper. The mast consists of identical triangles with cyclic symmetry. Bar stresses and necessary external nodal loads of the mast during the motion are studied analytically. The results show that the mechanical behaviors are different when the initial height of the mast is different. Then the numerical analysis is used to prove the accuracy of the analytical results. The influence of the geometry and the number of sides of the polygon on the folding behavior of the basic segment is also investigated. The folding process of the mast with multistories was discussed. The effect of the imperfection based on the eigenvalue buckling modes on the folding behavior is also studied. It can be found that when the number of sides of the polygon is small, the imperfection in the axial direction affects the energy seriously by changing the folding sequence of the mast. When the number of sides of the polygon is larger, the imperfection in the horizontal plane has significant effect on the folding pattern, which leads to the sudden change of energy curve.