Abstract

Lamina emergent mechanisms (LEMs) are a subset of compliant mechanisms which are fabricated from planar materials; use compliance, or flexibility of the material, to transfer energy; and have motion that emerges out of the fabrication plane. LEMs provide potential design advantages by reducing the number of parts, reducing cost, reducing weight, improving recyclability, increasing precision, and eliminating assembly, to name a few. However, there are inherent design and modeling challenges including complexities in large, non-linear deflections, singularities that exist when leaving the planar state, and the coupling of material properties and geometry in predicting mechanism behavior. This thesis examines the planar and spherical LEMs and their relation to origami. Origami, the art of paper folding, is used to better understand spherical LEMs and flat-folding mechanisms in general. All single-layer planar four-bar LEMs are given with their respective layouts. These are all change-point pinned mechanisms (i.e. no slider cranks). Graph representations are used to show the similarities between action origami and mechanisms. Origami principles of flat-folding are shown to be analogous to principles of mechanisms including rules for assembly and motion.

Degree

MS

College and Department

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology; Mechanical Engineering

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2012-04-30

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd5223

Keywords

origami, compliant mechanism, lamina emergent mechanism

Language

English

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