On the Incompressibility of Cylindrical Origami Patterns
Fridrich Bos, Max Wardetzky, Etienne Vouga, and Omer Gottesman
Journal of Mechanical Design, 2016

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The art and science of folding intricate three-dimensional structures out of paper has occupied artists, designers, engineers, and mathematicians for decades, culminating in the design of deployable structures and mechanical metamaterials. Here we investigate the axial compressibility of origami cylinders, i.e., cylindrical structures folded from rectangular sheets of paper. We prove, using geometric arguments, that a general fold pattern only allows for a finite number of isometric cylindrical embeddings. Therefore, compressibility of such structures requires either stretching the material or deforming the folds. Our result considerably restricts the space of constructions that must be searched when designing new types of origami-based rigid-foldable deployable structures and metamaterials.

Official Paper Link: Journal of Mechanical Design
Preprint (with Appendices): arXiv