How Does the Inter-Rib Angle Affect the Lifting Angle of an Earwig-Inspired Folding Structure — An Experimental Study Using Paper Models

This study focuses on the internal angle of the earwig wing paper model, a biologically inspired model that has been widely studied. The mechanism inspired by the earwig wing demonstrates unique crease pattern that contains a double bistable state. In total, we made 10 different paper models, each with a different internal angle. The range of the internal angle is from 40 to 130 degrees to investigate the effect of changing the internal angle on the lifting angle of the paper earwig model. The tool used to obtain the lifting angle measurement is ImageJ. During the experiment, Section1 was fully folded, and a standard horizontal line was put for reference, then the Section 2 lifted up automatically. Our data shows that when θ≤60°the lifting angle shows downward trend, and when 60°<θ≤90°, and when 90°<θ the lifting angle start to decrease again. This study suggests that the reason of this might because the changing of θ al so change the proportion of length of mountain and valley line.