A plane linkage and its tessellation for deployable structure

Deployable structures are widely used in space applications such as solar arrays and antennas. Recently, inspired by origami, more deployable structures have been developed. This paper outlined a novel design scheme for deployable structures by taking a plane linkage as an origami unit with a large deployable ratio. The mountain and valley (M-V) crease assignment and kinematics of the plane linkage were analyzed. Physical interference in the folding progress was discovered geometrically and resolved by the split-vertex technique. Finally, tessellation of the derived pattern was successfully used to create a large-deployable-ratio structure, which was found to exhibit considerable potential in future space applications. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.