Research Report

Rinki Imada (The University of Tokyo)

From November 14th to December 13th, I visited Professor L. Mahadevan’s group at Harvard University under the financial support for the poster award winner in FMfI2023. The group has been working on broad research topics, including morphology, soft-matter physics, hydrodynamics, and origami science.

Currently, I am working on the kinematics of origami structures using a novel dynamical system model representing the coupled folding motion of unit cells forming the entire shape. This research aims to capture the nonlinear structure behind the geometry/kinematics of origami, which has been sometimes neglected, and create exciting functionalities. One primary objective of my visit was to introduce the perspective of physics into our research methodology. In particular, I learned the topological mechanics of origami structures originally proposed by soft-matter physicists for the study of periodic frameworks and tried to relate that approach with our dynamical system models. Through discussions with the group members, we identified some correspondence between our approach and topological mechanics, at least in the linear regime. For example, we can calculate possible infinitesimal deformation modes of origami structures using either of the two approaches, and each method has some strong/weak points compared to the other.

Now, our collaborative team is initiating the disorder origami/kirigami project. This project aims to clarify how introducing disorder in origami/kirigami affects its mathematical/mechanical properties, which has not been investigated. What I learned and obtained during this stay will help us promote this project and future research. Finally, I would like to thank you to APCMfI and IMI for giving me such a great opportunity.