2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

With the school being online, there was a need to look at innovative ways to find hands-on labs for students which would be related to materials engineering. In this effort, a new module of Origami in Engineering was developed. Origami is a traditional Japanese art or technique of folding paper into a variety of decorative or representational forms. Typically, origami is thought of as the art of folding paper into animals or flowers. In recent years, origami has been useful in large- and small-scale engineering applications, from large solar arrays in space to tiny medical devices. Origami has also found applications in structural engineering. For our module, the students were expected to fold regular printer paper using the miura ori fold which demonstrated interesting material properties like the negative Poisson’s ratio. In addition, the students predicted and then tested the strength of the folded paper. The teaching module is presented here. The student projects are also included. Additionally, what worked, what did not work, and why, is then discussed in this paper, along with suggestions for improvement.