Curved-crease origami hybrid structures with tailorable buckling and energy absorption

Origami-inspired structures (OIS), renowned for their lightweight design, encounter energy absorption challenges attributed to global buckling. This paper presents a design and hybridization strategy that integrates origami-inspired structures with existing state-of-the-art cellular lattices to create origami-inspired hybrid structures (OIHS), aimed at addressing buckling concerns and customizing the crushing behavior of thin-walled structures. The investigation explores the compressive response of additively-manufactured curved crease OIS and prismatic structures (PS) with diverse cross-sections, including circular origami structure (COS), triangular origami structure (TOS), square origami structure (SOS), and hexagon origami structure (HOS). The experimental results indicate that the COS design offered the highest specific energy absorption (SEA) of 11 kJ/kg, due to controlled deformation associated with the crease lines. The COS hybridized structure, with cellular lattices, exhibited a yielding-dominated behavior, resulting in a lower peak force, a sustained plateau force and a well-controlled deformation response. Furthermore, the COS hybridized with a plate lattice, exceeded the SEA of the auxetic and BCC OIHS structures by 62 % and 71 %, respectively. The circular origami plate hybrid (COPH) design was selected to investigate the effect of varying the top edge angle (α) and the relative density on the mechanical properties and the SEA. It was found that increasing the value of alpha resulted in a higher peak stress and an increased buckling load. Moreover, with its higher relative density, the vertical plate within the OIS contributed to a greater level of structural stability in the plateau region, resulting in an increase in mechanical properties and SEA. These findings advance the understanding of OIS by presenting effective hybridization strategies to mitigate buckling and achieve stable plateau stresses and higher crushing force efficiencies, particularly at lower relative densities, surpassing those reported in the literature. This contributes significantly to the broader field of lightweight structural design.