Analysis of Static and Dynamic Behavior of Thick-Walled PALEO Elements

Plastically annealed lamina emergent mechanisms have been recently introduced as origami-based structures that can be designed with a tendency to return into arbitrary folding states without additional actuators or external stimuli. The inherent elasticity of the surrogate hinges can realize a large range of elastic deformation. This paper describes the implementation of the PALEO principle for structures made from 2mm thick polycarbonate. The flat sheet is machined to generate the hinge elements and is afterwards folded and thermally annealed in a non-flat state. A FE analysis of the initial folding and behavior after annealing is carried out in parallel, with the goal to determine strains and stresses for different hinge configurations. Finally, a dynamic test is carried out on PALEO unit cells to determine the fatigue behavior of the manufactured samples.