Designing and Manufacturing a Super Excellent and Ultra-Cheap Energy Absorber by Origami Engineering

Current vehicle energy absorbers have two defects during collision, such as only 70 % collapsed in its length and high initial peak load. It is because present energy absorbed column is the most primitive from the point of Origami structure. We developed the column so called Reversed Spiral Origami Structure; RSO which solves these 2 defects. However, for RSO, the manufacturing cost of hydroforming in the existing technology is too expensive to be applied in real vehicle structure. To address the problems, a new structure, named Reversed Torsion Origami Structure (RTO), has been developed, which can be manufactured at a low cost by using simple torsion. This structure is possible to replace conventional energy absorbers and it is expected to be widely used such as not only in automobile structures but also in building ones.