Although not always apparent, Origami is indeed pervasive in many areas of science, engineering, technology, entertainment, education, fashion, etc. In general, origami structures exhibit complicated behavior, beyond simple folding, which cannot be explained by geometry alone. Thus, there is a need for a simple and effective analysis tool that provides insight into the deformation behavior of origami assemblages. This is just what Prof. Ke Liu have provided with the MERLIN software, which implements nonlinear mechanics theory using a reduced representation of origami to model large global displacements. Now, within seconds, the user can predict the behavior of an origami structure and unfold the underlying physics.

The work was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society-A on October 11, 2017.

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