Cold Gas-Pressure Folding of Miura-ori Sheets

Folding sheets from flat sheet materials into 3D surfaces provides a way to form textured sheets with a deep relief, without stretching the base material. Manufacturing can therefore be done using only low-energy bending operations along the fold lines. An important challenge to be overcome in the manufacturing process is the significant in-plane biaxial contraction during the folding process. A novel manufacturing process is herein introduced, which uses cold gas-pressure to fold the sheets and requires a minimum of initial tooling. Calculations were done to determine the required forming pressure to fold an example folded sheet, a Miura-ori sheet, and were compared with trials.