Presentation
Snapping Deployable Toroids for Modular Gridshells
DescriptionWe introduce a novel class of polyhedral tori (PQ-toroids) that snap between
two stable configurations – a flat state and a deployed one separated by an
energy barrier. Being able to create PQ-toroids from any set of given planar
bottom and side faces opens the possibility to assemble the bistable blocks
into a thick freeform curved shell structure to follow a planar quadrilateral
(PQ) net with coplanar adjacent offset directions.
A design pipeline is developed and presented for inversely computing
PQ-toroid modules using conjugate net decompositions of a given surface.
We analyze the snapping behavior and energy barriers through simulation
and build physical prototypes to validate the feasibility of the proposed
system.
This work expands the geometric design space of multistable origami for
lightweight modular structures and offers practical applications in architec-
tural and deployable systems.
two stable configurations – a flat state and a deployed one separated by an
energy barrier. Being able to create PQ-toroids from any set of given planar
bottom and side faces opens the possibility to assemble the bistable blocks
into a thick freeform curved shell structure to follow a planar quadrilateral
(PQ) net with coplanar adjacent offset directions.
A design pipeline is developed and presented for inversely computing
PQ-toroid modules using conjugate net decompositions of a given surface.
We analyze the snapping behavior and energy barriers through simulation
and build physical prototypes to validate the feasibility of the proposed
system.
This work expands the geometric design space of multistable origami for
lightweight modular structures and offers practical applications in architec-
tural and deployable systems.
Event Type
Technical Papers
TimeWednesday, 17 December 20259:32am - 9:43am HKT
LocationMeeting Room S421, Level 4