Miura fold

The Miura fold (ミウラ折り, Miura-ori^?) is a rigid fold that has been used to simulate large solar panel arrays for space satellites in the Japanese 1995 Space Flight Unit^[1]. It was invented by Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura. It is an example of the practical importance of rigid origami, or treating hinges and rigid surfaces like the paper and creases in paper folding problems.

A folded Miura fold can be packed into an area no larger than the size of one of the segments that make up the overall shape^[2], its thickness restricted only by the thickness of the folded material.

The fold can also be unpacked in just one motion by pulling on opposite ends of the folded material, and likewise folded again by pushing the two ends back together. This was beneficial to the aforementioned solar array as it reduced the number of motors required to unfold it, reducing the overall weight and complexity of the mechanism.

References

1. ^ Origami science
2. ^ Solar Arrays

External links

• Miura Map Fold (PDF)
• Miura-ori corporate site
• Peter Forbes, The Gecko's Foot: How Scientists are Taking a Leaf from Nature's Book, Harper Perennial, 2006, pp. 181-195.