Comparison of Soft Curved Crease Surrogate Hinges

Abstract

The use of compliant hinges as integral elements of origami-based and origami-inspired structures can provide significant benefits compared to other hinge concepts, namely ease of integration, durability and tunable stiffness, range and target positioning of the hinge. So far, mostly classical straight-crease constructions have been used for the application of such hinges. Curved-crease geometries impose new constraints on the application of compliant elements in the crease region due to the implicit surface curvature in every non-flat folding state. This paper introduces a new, simple surrogate hinge based on angled slash arrays, and compares their behavior to classical lamina-emergent surrogate hinges.