Rapid deployment of curved surfaces via programmable auxetics

Abstract

Deployable structures are physical mechanisms that can easily transition between two or more geometric configurations; such structures enable industrial, scientific, and consumer applications at a wide variety of scales. This paper develops novel deployable structures that can approximate a large class of doubly-curved surfaces and are easily actuated from a flat initial state via inflation or gravitational loading. The structures are based on two-dimensional rigid mechanical linkages that implicitly encode the curvature of the target shape via a user-programmable pattern that permits locally isotropic scaling under load. We explicitly characterize the shapes that can be realized by such structures---in particular, we show that they can approximate target surfaces of positive mean curvature and bounded scale distortion relative to a given reference domain. Based on this observation, we develop efficient computational design algorithms for approximating a given input geometry. The resulting designs can be rapidly manufactured via digital fabrication technologies such as laser cutting, CNC milling, or 3D printing. We validate our approach through a series of physical prototypes and present several application case studies, ranging from surgical implants to large-scale deployable architecture.