An origami shield with supporting frame structures optimized by a feature-driven topology optimization method

In this paper, the design, manufacture and testing of an origami protective shield with a supporting frame structure are presented. It consists of an origami shield surface and a deployable supporting frame structure that needs to be portable and sufficiently stiff. First, for the design of the shield surface, a three-stage origami crease pattern is developed to reduce the shield size in the folded state. The shield surface consists of several stiff modular panels and layered with flexible fabric. The modular panels are made of a multi-layer composite where a ceramic layer is made of small pieces to improve durability as those small pieces enable restriction of crack propagation. Then, the supporting frame structure is designed as a chain-of-bars structure in order to fold into a highly compact state as a bundle of bars and deploy in sequence. Thus, a feature-driven topology structural optimization method preserving component sequence is developed where the inter-dependence of sub-structures is taken into account. A bar with semi-circular ends is used as a basic design feature. The positions of the bar's end points are treated as design variables and the width of the bars is kept constant. Then, a constraint on the total length of the chain of bars is introduced. Finally, the modular panels made of multi-layer composite and the full-scale prototype of the origami shield are fabricated and tested to verify the bullet-proof performance.