Translational Method for Designing Folded Plate Structures

摘要

This paper concerns non-developable folded plate structures. It presents the translational method; a design technique that creates three-dimensional non-developable systems that can approximate any surface made by translating a generic curve along another generic curve. The continuous folding process is guaranteed by keeping the value of dihedral angles throughout the structure constant at each phase. Once solved the kinematic constraints, the lengths of sides are opportunely varied to approximate any translational surface. The translational method allows for free setting of the target curvature, the approximation span, and the sharpness of the plates.