A plane linkage and its tessellation for deployable structure

Deployable structures are widely used in space applications such as solar arrays and an- tennas. Recently, inspired by origami, more deployable structures have been developed. This paper outlined a novel design scheme for deployable structures by taking a plane linkage as an origami unit with a large deployable ratio. The mountain and valley (M-V) crease assignment and kinematics of the plane linkage were analyzed. Physical interfer- ence in the folding progress was discovered geometrically and resolved by the split-vertex technique. Finally, tessellation of the derived pattern was successfully used to create a large-deployable-ratio structure, which was found to exhibit considerable potential in fu- ture space applications.