Deployable and Reconfigurable Structures Laboratory – Home for Deployable and Reconfigurable Structures Laboratory

Deployable and Reconfigurable Structures Lab Group. Photo: Joseph Xu/Michigan Engineering, Communications & Marketing

Evgueni Filipov (fourth from left), Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, discusses various forms of deployable structures with his graduate students in the GG Brown Building on January 23, 2019. Photo: Joseph Xu/Michigan Engineering, Communications & Marketing

Zhongyuan Wo, Graduate Student Research Assistant at Civil and Environmental Engineering, adjusts an instrument that compares load drops in hopes of understanding how the geometry plays a fundamental role in the distribution of stresses in Miura Origami. Photo by Robert Coelius/Michigan Engineering, Communications and Marketing.

Yi Zhu, Graduate Student Research Assistant with Civil and Environmental Engineering inspects one of the many deployable and reconfigurable structures. Folding and adaptable structures based on the principles of origami can have practical applications ranging in scale and discipline from biomedical robotics to deployable architecture. Photo by Robert Coelius/Michigan Engineering, Communications and Marketing

Maria Redoutey, Graduate Student Research Assistant at Civil and Environmental Engineering, works on developing small scale functional actuators to be used in micro-robotics. Photo by Robert Coelius/Michigan Engineering, Communications and Marketing

"Mechanical Charcteristics of the Bistable Origami Hypar" published in Extreme Mechanics Letters. (Oct 2018)

News and Announcements:

Research on coupled origami tubes published at PNAS. The new “zipper-coupled” origami tubes have one flexible mode through which they can deploy, yet they are substantially stiffer for other types of bending and twisting deformations. These unique mechanical properties could lead to applications of varying scale from architectural canopies (left) to metamaterials (right).

View details, animations and media coverage.

	(Jan. 2019) Welcome Mira, Ann and Bin!!! Mira (PhD student from Marco-molecular Science Enigineering Umich), Ann (Postdoc from EPFL), and Bin (Visiting Scholar from Tsinghua University) joined our group!
	(Nov. 2018) Research Paper on Mechanics of Origami Hypar is published. ET Filipov, M Redoutey, Mechanical characteristics of the bistable origami hypar, Extreme Mechanics Letters 25, 16-26. Link
	(Sept. 2018) Prof. Filipov selected to participate in a U.S. National Academy of Sciences Frontiers Symposium. This sixth annual Arab-American Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Symposium will be hosted in the Kuwait National Library (November 4-6) to discuss leading scientific advances on a wide range of topics. See detailed story here.
	(Aug. 2018) Welcome Maria and Yi!!! Yi Zhu (B.S. Tongji University, M.S. U.C. Berkeley) and Maria Redoutey (B.S. U. Michigan) have joined the Deployable and Reconfigurable Structures Lab as Ph.D. students.
	(July 2018) Group member Zhongyuan Wo was selected to participate in the Student Poster Competition of the World Congress on Computational Mechanics (WCCM). The poster entitled “Geometric Implications for Stress Concentration in Miura Origami,” explores how the geometry plays a fundamental role in the distribution of stresses in such engineering systems.
	(July 2018) Prof. Filipov wins the 2018 DARPA Young Faculty Award. This Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project will explore micro-scale origami-inspired systems that can self-assemble, reconfigure, and adapt for new functions. See detailed story here.
	(April 2018) Research group member Steven Woodruff awarded the National Science Foundation GRFP Fellowship!!!The fellowship will support Steven’s novel PhD research on the analysis of curved crease deployable structures. Read the CEE UMich News Story about this accomplishment
	(March 2018) Steven’s paper selected as one of four finalists for the ASCE E&S Conference Student Paper Competition. Our paper entitled “Structural Analysis of Curved Folded Deployables” was presented at the 2018 ASCE Earth and Space Conference April 9-12, in Cleveland, OH.

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