title: Symmetric waterbomb origami.
abstract: The traditional waterbomb origami, produced from a pattern consisting of a series of vertices where six creases meet, is one of the most widely used origami patterns. From a rigid origami viewpoint, it generally has multiple degrees of freedom, but when the pattern is folded symmetrically, the mobility reduces to one. This paper presents a thorough kinematic investigation on symmetric folding of the waterbomb pattern. It has been found that the pattern can have two folding paths under certain circumstance. Moreover, the pattern can be used to fold thick panels. Not only do the additional constraints imposed to fold the thick panels lead to single degree of freedom folding, but the folding process is also kinematically equivalent to the origami of zero-thickness sheets. The findings pave the way for the pattern being readily used to fold deployable structures ranging from flat roofs to large solar panels.
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China; Key Laboratory of Mechanism Theory and Equipment Design of Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4742-6944
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering , Tianjin University , 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Huijuan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering , Tianjin University , 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jiayao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering , Tianjin University , 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China; Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PJ, UK.
authors.forename: Zhong
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5286-7218
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: You
keywords: rigid origami; thick-panel origami; waterbomb base; waterbomb tessellation