New origami-inspired system turns flat tubes into solid building materials

Engineers at RMIT University have designed an innovative tubular structural system that can be flat-packed for easy transportation and unfolded to form strong building materials. The breakthrough is made possible by a self-locking system inspired by curved-fold origami, a technique that uses curved fold lines to fold paper.

Lead researchers Dr Jeff (Ting-Uei) Lee and Distinguished Professor Mike (Yi Min) Xie said bamboo, which has internal structures that provide natural reinforcement, inspired the tube design.

“This self-locking system is the result of clever geometric design,” says Lee, from RMIT’s School of Engineering. “Our invention is suitable for large-scale use: a panel weighing just 1.3kg, made from multiple tubes, can easily support a 75kg person.”

Flat tubes are already widely used in engineering and scientific applications, such as biomedical devices, aerospace structures, robotics and civil construction, including temporary buildings as part of disaster recovery efforts.

The new system makes these tubes faster and easier to assemble, with the ability to automatically transform into a solid, self-locking state.

The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesOther contributors to this work include Dr Hongjia Lu, Jiaming Ma and Ngoc San Ha from RMIT’s School of Engineering and Associate Professor Joseph Gattas from the University of Queensland.

“Our research not only opens up new possibilities for innovative and multifunctional structural designs, but also can significantly improve existing deployable systems,” said Xie, from the School of Engineering.

“When NASA deploys solar panels, for example, the poles used are tubes that have been folded flat before being deployed in space,” Lee explained. “These tubes are hollow, so they can deform under certain forces in space. With our new design, these poles could be a stronger structure.”

Xie explained that their intelligent algorithm could control the structure’s behavior under forces by changing the orientation of the tubes.

“With our origami-inspired innovation, the kit tubes are not only easy to carry, but they are also strong enough to withstand external forces when in use,” Xie said. “The tube is also self-locking, meaning its solid shape is securely locked in place without the need for additional mechanisms or human intervention.”

Next steps

The team will continue to improve the design and explore new possibilities for its development.

“We want to extend the self-locking function to different tube shapes and test how the tubes behave under various forces, such as bending and twisting,” Lee said. “We are also exploring new materials and manufacturing methods to create smaller, more precise tubes.”

The team is developing tubes that can be deployed for a range of applications without requiring much manual effort.

“We plan to improve our intelligent algorithm to make the tubes even more adaptable and efficient in different real-world situations,” Xie said.