Part 1 of 2 Parts
It seems that the ancient Japanese paper folding art of origami is finding uses in the space industry. I recently posted an article about using origami techniques to make foldable fuel tanks. Now engineers are using it to make foldable antennas.
Origami is a combination of the Japanese word “ori” meaning “folding” and Japanese word “kami” meaning “paper.” Origami is now used to mean all folding techniques regardless of what culture they came from. The goal of the origami is to convert a flat square sheet of paper into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting techniques. Modern folding techniques usually discourage the use of cuts, glue or marking of the paper.
There are a small number of basic origami folds which can be combined in a huge variety of ways to make very intricate designs. The principles of origami are also used to design stents, packaging and other engineering applications.
Technical origami is a term that is applied to the design of origami folds via an engineering crease pattern. The field of origami mathematics allows designers to figure out the system of folds for a particular result before any paper is actual folded. Origami mathematics was developed by Robert Lang, Meguro Toshiykui and others. It allows for the creation of extremely complex figures with multi-extensions such as many legged centipedes, complete human figures, and many other shapes.
When designers are working on packages for deployment in space, space and materials are at a premium. Many components can be packed into small spaces but bowl-shaped antennas are very difficult to reduce in size for launch.
Now researchers at Texas A&M are using the principles of origami to create a parabolic structure from a flat surface using a shape-memory polymer. When these memory polymers are heated, they change their shape in a systematic and controlled way that mimics the folding of origami. This reshaping lifts and rearranges the polymer into the shape of a bowl. They have tested their design and shown that it functions as well as regular bowl-shaped antennas. Their research was reported in the journal Smart Materials and Structures.
Dr. Darren Hartl is an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering of Texas A&M. He said, "Initially, we were largely focused on self-folding origami structures: how would you make them, how would you design them into different shapes, what material would you use? Having answered some of these questions, we turned to some real-world applications of origami engineering, like adaptive antennas, for which there has been very little work done. In this study, we combine folding behavior and antenna performance and address that gap."
Antennas come in a variety of designs. Their major function is to transmit or receive information in the form of electromagnetic waves. Some antennas are used to communicate between television stations and satellites in Earth orbit. These antennas have a parabolic or bowl shape. A parabolic shape means that electromagnetic waves that arrive in parallel at the antenna are converged into a single point in the center of the antenna. Conversely, when these parabolic antennas are used to transmit electromagnetic waves, the waves are generated at a point in the center of the parabola and sent out in parallel.
Please read Part 2