An undergraduate engineering student at Brigham Young University in Utah has discovered a new family of origami patterns that has promising applications across a range of fields, including space systems, medical devices, bulletproof shields, architecture, furniture and aerodynamic components for transportation.
Kelvin (Zhongyuan) Wang, a BYU mechanical engineering major, and his collaborators coined the term ‘bloom patterns’ to describe this new group of unfolding mechanisms that resemble flowers blooming. ‘Bloom patterns have three main characteristics that make them unique,’ Wang said. ‘First, they can be folded flat. Second, they are deployable. Third, they expand like a flower blooming, rotating from a symmetric centre.’
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While one or two of these features are common in origami, it has been rare to find all three characteristics in a single design. This combination offers both technical and economic advantages: flat foldability is ideal for stowing large arrays in compact spaces; deployable systems require crease patterns that allow transformation without damaging the material; repeating panels and rotational symmetry offer stability and lower manufacturing cost, since it’s more efficient to replicate identical panels than to produce varied parts.
Another unique aspect of the bloom pattern is the intermediate shape that emerges between the flat and fully deployed forms.
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‘One can imagine using that intermediate state, that spherical shape, as the desired finished state,’ said Robert J Lang, an origami artist and leading theorist on origami mathematics who has worked with BYU on various origami projects for the past ten years. ‘If one wants, for example, a bowl or perhaps a dish antenna, the bloom pattern could provide that.’
Lang emphasised that this discovery opens a research field for testing real-world applications. ‘We’ve opened a door into a new family of patterns, and we can now go explore through that door,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of patterns out there waiting to be discovered. And this paper provides a guidepost for how to systematically explore this new space and find the structures that are going to be useful.’
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For Wang the process of discovery has been both creative and fulfilling. ‘The process of discovery requires a lot of repetition,’ he said. ‘I feel incredibly peaceful as I fold and get into that state of flow. I can fold sometimes for hours. It feels wonderful to do that even when it’s mostly repetitions. I’m creating something out of paper with my hands and ideas come to my mind – to reality – about how to make it into a physical model,’ Wang said.‘I love to do origami but if I can use origami to make practical applications that can benefit the world, that will be a dream come true.’
The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.