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Origami

Folding creases through bending

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 366–368 (2015)Cite this article

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The folding of origami structures involves bending deformations that are not explicit in the crease pattern.

Silverberg and co-authors found that to properly model the folding of the square-twist pattern they needed to consider two distinct modes of deformation: creasing and facet bending (the square twist could not be folded by creasing alone). In their model, creasing is differentiated from bending in that creases represent a plastic mode of deformation, whereas bending is reversible (put simply, creases, but not the bending of facets, leave a mark on the folded paper). Indeed, folding a piece of paper entails first the formation of a fold through bending, and then the creation of a crease. Importantly, the authors show that facet bending and other such intermediate reversible steps are crucial for modelling the underlying mechanical principles of origami. As with the bending of shoelaces when tying one's shoes, bending in paper acts as a crutch for the folding of origami, and allows for motions that would otherwise be impossible (in fact, certain origami structures, such as the square twist, cannot be made if paper were rigid).

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Figure 1: Folding of the square-twist structure.
Figure 2: Origami with two-dimensional materials.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Talal Al-Mulla and Markus J. Buehler are in the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 1-290, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Talal Al-Mulla & Markus J. Buehler

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  1. Talal Al-Mulla
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  2. Markus J. Buehler
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Correspondence to Markus J. Buehler.

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Al-Mulla, T., Buehler, M. Folding creases through bending. Nature Mater 14, 366–368 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4258

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