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We investigate the impact behavior of the Triangulated Cylindrical Origami (TCO) architecture to determine if it can effectively protect a payload dropped from a height. The TCO architecture inherently exhibits coupled longitudinal and rotational motions. TCO is highly tunable and can offer monostable or bistable characteristics based on its initial geometric configurations such as the height and rotational angle. When monostable TCO unit cells are combined in a chain, they can exhibit interesting rarefaction behavior under impact. Specifically, if one end of the chain is impacted, the initial compressive wave can be overtaken by a tensile wave, such that the other end of the chain can feel tension instead of compression in a counter-intuitive manner. In this study, we begin by designing monostable TCO unit cells that are numerically shown to exhibit rarefaction behavior when constructed in chains. Then, we fabricate plastic TCO unit cell prototypes and apply static compression to these prototypes to verify their monostability and to determine their mechanical properties. These unit cells are then organized in a chain of multiple unit cells that are connected mechanically. The chain is then tested dynamically by dropping it using a custom-made drop tower apparatus. We measure the impact felt by the TCO system by using accelerometers and digital image correlation systems. We find that this origami-based system offers a tunable way to mitigate impact applied to the proof mass, showing great potential as a novel payload impact mitigation system for space applications.
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