Multi-material additive manufacturing of Yoshimura origami triangulated cylinder

Origami-inspired structures hold significant potential in aerospace, offering both compactness and deployability, which is achieved by folding their crease lines into various patterns. However, challenges in manufacturing methods hinder their applications in various fields. Recently, additive manufacturing (AM) has enabled the creation of complex 3D structures using different materials to achieve the required stiffness and foldability. This study focuses on employing multi-material additive manufacturing (MMAM) to fabricate origami-inspired structures and investigate multi-material failures and structural performance under cyclic compression loading mode. The zero-thickness creases in the original Yoshimura design were modified by changing the folding lines to curved creases and were designed with single and multiple folding cells to form different cylinders. These cylinders were successfully manufactured using a dual-material extrusion 3D printing process. The cyclic compression tests were performed to investigate the foldability and failures of the cylinders. The results showed no considerable failure in the multi-material interfaces between the stiff and folding regions within single cells. As the cell number increased, local failure between cells interfacial joints was observed, reducing the structural strength to a certain level. This study demonstrated that MMAM technology has promising potential for manufacturing complex deployable structures with strong compatibility between different materials within single cells. In the case of multi-cell structures, interfacial failure at the joints between cells can be reduced by adding locking mechanisms.