Abstract
We explore a new design strategy of leveraging kinematic bifurcation in creating origami/kirigami-based three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical, reconfigurable, mechanical metamaterials with tunable mechanical responses. We start from constructing three basic, thick, panel-based structural units composed of 4, 6 and 8 rigidly rotatable cubes in close-looped connections. They are modelled, respectively, as 4R, 6R and 8R (R stands for revolute joint) spatial looped kinematic mechanisms, and are used to create a library of reconfigurable hierarchical building blocks that exhibit kinematic bifurcations. We analytically investigate their reconfiguration kinematics and predict the occurrence and locations of kinematic bifurcations through a trial-correction modelling method. These building blocks are tessellated in 3D to create various 3D bifurcated hierarchical mechanical metamaterials that preserve the kinematic bifurcations in their building blocks to reconfigure into different 3D architectures. By combining the kinematics and considering the elastic torsional energy stored in the folds, we develop the geometric mechanics to predict their tunable anisotropic Poisson's ratios and stiffnesses. We find that kinematic bifurcation can significantly effect mechanical responses, including changing the sign of Poisson's ratios from negative to positive beyond bifurcation, tuning the anisotropy, and overcoming the polarity of structural stiffness and enhancing the number of deformation paths with more reconfigured shapes.This article is part of the theme issue 'Origami/Kirigami-inspired structures: from fundamentals to applications'.