Hello everyone, Currently in internship, I work with a team of students on the design of an inflatable space conical antenna (PICARD project - REXUS), that should be launch next year. I am the team member responsible to find the best way to fold it, and so I am actively working on a flat-foldable conical structure.
Several months ago, I found the research paper entitled "Mathematical Approach to Model Foldable Conical Structures Using Conformal Mapping" (http://mechanicaldesign.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/article.aspx?article id=1882893) written by Dr. Taketoshi Nojima, Prof. Sachiko Ishida and Prof. Ichiro Hagiwara. Inspired by their work, I am currently developing a Matlab GUI entirely inspired by this approach. The idea of my GUI is to enable the user to draw the crease pattern of the conical (or cylindrical) structure he wants to fold (flat-fold or not) according to the defined radius and height parameters of the cone, proposing several patterns (Spiral type, Repeating spiral type, Scalene triangles, Trapezoid, Isoceles, Nojima's cone...). I have made progress in my work but I still have several issues... This is not simple... a lot of different crease patterns can be used and the mathematics give me a hard time ... Find here few pictures showing few elements I have already done. https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/96118 I am working alone on this matter... Therefore, if anyone is interested in the subject (Origami and Mathematics, Cone, Programming), I am currently looking for a partner to deal with some mathematical points of the method that bother me for weeks and also improve my work. Especially, I didn't managed to find a combination of angles (transformed angles alpha', beta', alpha" and beta" with correction as described in the paper) that satisfies the flat-foldable and closure conditions despite my best efforts to follow the method... I think I am missing a point, but I don't understand where. I'm ready to share my work and the documents I have accumulated so far. Let me know. Cheers,
