Kinematics of the Morph Origami Pattern and its Hybrid States

A new degree-four vertex origami, called the Morph pattern, has been recently proposed by the authors (Pratapa, Liu, Paulino, Phy. Rev. Lett. 2019), which exhibits interesting properties such as extreme tunability of Poisson’s ratio from negative infinity to positive infinity, and an ability to transform into hybrid states through rigid origami kinematics. We look at the geometry of the Morph unit cell that can exist in two characteristic modes differing in the mountain/valley assignment of the degree-four vertex and then assemble the unit cells to form complex tessellations that are inter-transformable and exhibit contrasting properties. We present alternative and detailed descriptions to (i) understand how the Morph pattern can smoothly transform across all its configuration states, (ii) characterize the configuration space of the Morph pattern with distinguishing paths for different sets of hybrid states, and (iii) derive the condition for Poisson’s ratio switching and explain the mode-locking phenomenon in the Morph pattern when subjected to in-plane deformation as a result of the inter-play between local and global kinematics.