Characterization of magnetically stabilized hinges for origami-inspired mechanisms

Origami-inspired mechanisms provide opportunities for deployable systems, including reflectarray antennas. There is a need for approaches to deploy and stabilize such arrays. Magnetic mechanisms show promise for meeting those needs and how methods for modelling their behaviour would facilitate their design and analysis. We demonstrate the existence of bistability in select configurations of magnetically stabilized hinges and characterize their equilibrium positions as a function of parameters estimated from simulation data for these mechanisms. Other relevant information such as potential energy, axial force data, angular position of unstable equilibria and transition values from bistability to monostability are also modelled. The results are verified through experimental torque and stability data for selected configurations of the mechanisms.This article is part of the theme issue 'Origami/Kirigami-inspired structures: from fundamentals to applications'.