The Folding of Triangulated Cylinders, Part II: The Folding Process

Abstract

In the first paper of this series we have introduced a class of foldable triangulated cylinders. In this paper we consider three particular examples of these cylinders and analyse computationally the way they fold. We show that this process is nonuniform and that it consists of two phases. The first unsteady phase involves the gradual buildup of strain energy in a “shape transition region.” In the second phase the transition region moves toward the bottom of the cylinder under almost zero force. Although the behavior of the three example cylinders is qualitatively similar, the peak force on the cylinder, as well as the peak strain, have different magnitudes, in agreement with a result in our first paper.