Thin-Walled (Folded) Structures

Part of the Origami-Inspired Design research theme.

Folding offers an efficient way to make thin-walled structural components from flat sheet material. Research in the Lab characterises the fabrication, mechanics, and structural behaviour of folded thin-walled components in steel and other materials.

Folded Steel Structures

Folded assembly methods for thin-walled steel construction were developed using parametric and digitally-fabricated hinge lines. These structures were evaluated for assembly effort, manufacturing accuracy, and structural performance. Manufacturing accuracy, assessed by 3D digital image correlation and scanning, achieved precision within 50% of plate thickness even with unskilled assembly. Structural performance under uniaxial compressive load, analysed both experimentally and numerically, confirmed that conventional thin-walled steel analysis techniques can effectively model folded structure behaviours. Further information: DOI:10.1016/j.jcsr.2017.07.010.

Elastic Buckling Shape Control

Curved-crease origami was used to control the shape of elastically buckled tubes. Pre-embedded curved-crease origami patterns in thin-walled cylinders pre-determined the failure mode as a stabilised high-order elastica surface, which formed through a diamond buckling mode. Measurements of the deformed surface showed the buckled shapes to have a near-exact correspondence to the analytical curved-crease origami description. Further information: DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2018.11.005.

Rotational Stiffness in Steel Fold Lines

Digitally-fabricated hinge lines were developed to simplify and speed up the assembly of complex folded and origami-inspired steel structures, with accurate and predictable hinge stiffness that allowed rapid simulation of folded structures using simplified analysis. Tests characterised the elastic-plastic rotational behaviour and folding mechanics of these hinges, including thick panel clash behaviour. An ‘over-kerf’ manufacturing strategy was developed to eliminate clash in steel plates up to 3 mm thick. Further information: DOI:10.1016/j.engstruct.2020.110218.

Propagation Buckling

Origami-inspired tubular geometries possess a geometric texturing that can improve resistance to propagation buckling failures in pipelines. Experimental and numerical investigations both showed that this behaviour also occurs in localised instabilities (bulging) of elastic textured tubes, with an increase in critical and propagation pressures as compared to smooth tubes. Further information: DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2016.07.026.

Foldable Columns

Thin-walled foldable columns based on the ‘pillow box’ origami pattern kept their three-dimensional form during folding, because the pattern is self-locking. Two crease-weakening strategies, ‘dashed-line’ and ‘slit-hole’ creases, were proposed and validated experimentally, and a numerical study examined the axial compressive performance of columns with weakened curved creases. Both strategies allowed folding while preserving integrity under compression. Columns with dashed-line creases reached a load-to-weight ratio of up to 658.9, nearly twice that of an equivalent conventional square tube, and performance improved as the number of crease units increased. Further information: DOI: 10.3390/app151910756.

Zhang, Q., Gattas, J. M., & Feng, J. (2025). Effect of crease-weakening schemes on the structural performance of lightweight foldable columns based on the pillow box pattern. Applied Sciences, 15(19), 10756. https://doi.org/10.3390/app151910756

Bahremandi-Tolou, M., Gattas, J. M., & Luo, D. (2025). Design and fabrication of self-shaping steel curved surfaces with lamina emergent torsion arrays. In Proceedings of the 30th conference on computer aided architectural design research in asia (CAADRIA) [volume 2] (Vol. 2, pp. 439–448). CAADRIA. https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.caadria.2025.2.439

Shi, Q., & Gattas, J. M. (2021). Finite element analysis and thick-panel clash behaviour of steel fold-lines. In International design engineering technical conferences and computers and information in engineering conference (Vol. 85451, p. V08BT08A040). American Society of Mechanical Engineers. https://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2021-69513

Shi, Q., Heitzmann, M. T., & Gattas, J. M. (2020). Nonlinear rotational stiffness and clash prevention in perforated steel fold lines. Engineering Structures, 209, 110218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2020.110218

Lee, T.-U., Yang, X., Ma, J., Chen, Y., & Gattas, J. M. (2019). Elastic buckling shape control of thin-walled cylinder using pre-embedded curved-crease origami patterns. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 151, 322–330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2018.11.005

Shi, Q., Heitzmann, M. T., & Gattas, J. M. (2018). Analysis of steel origami tube with nonlinear rotational hinge stiffness. In Proceedings of the 25th australasian conference on the mechanics of structures and materials (ACMSM25).

Ramdoo, D., O’Connor, L., Guo, Zhiming, Fernando, D. N., Heitzmann, M. H., & Gattas, J. M. (2017). Low-cost folding fabrication of natural fibre composite thin walled columns. In Proceedings of 8th international conference on structural engineering and construction management (ISECM2017).

Shi, Q., Shi, X., Gattas, J. M., & Kitipornchai, S. (2017). Folded assembly methods for thin-walled steel structures. Journal of Constructional Steel Research, 138, 235–245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcsr.2017.07.010

Guo, Z., Gattas, J., Karampour, H., Wang, S., Albermani, F., et al. (2016). Numerical analysis on the buckling behaviour of curved-crease origami pipelines. In The twelfth ISOPE pacific/asia offshore mechanics symposium. International Society of Offshore; Polar Engineers. Retrieved from https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:499773

Garrett, D., You, Z., & Gattas, J. M. (2016). Curved crease tube structures as an energy absorbing crash box. In International design engineering technical conferences and computers and information in engineering conference (Vol. 50169, p. V05BT07A017). American Society of Mechanical Engineers. https://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2016-59784

Guo, Z., Gattas, J., Wang, S., Li, L., & Albermani, F. (2016). Experimental and numerical investigation of bulging behaviour of hyperelastic textured tubes. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 115, 665–675. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2016.07.026

Shi, X., & Gattas, J. M. (2015). Design and folded fabrication of novel self-braced triangular structural sections and frames. In International conference on performance-based and life-cycle structural engineering (pp. 792–798). School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland. https://doi.org/10.14264/uql.2016.424