Accordion
A simple corrugated fold, this crease pattern is much simpler than Miura-ori, but with similar properties.
Firstly, it only expands in one direction, making it ideal for scenarios where portability and quick deployment is necessary. Accordion has one control parameter, the angle between folds, directly related to the extent by which the structure has been expanded.
This pattern also allows structural depth to be created, accommodating larger loads without sheet bending. As the pattern becomes more folded, depth is added perpendicular to the original plane.
Another feature of Accordion is that it forms natural corrugation, helping the structure to resist torsion and local deformation by creating much needed stiffness in design.
Additionally, although a flat sheet itself can be considered portable, the Accordion fold pattern can fold down into a more compact strip of material, which is ideal for portability and deployability
Prototypes
I skipped the iterative design process here and went straight to using 300Micron Polypropylene for this structure. I used a laser cutter to score folds in both sides of an A4 sheet before folding it by hand.
I realised early on that I had gotten the folds in the wrong place, meaning the structure was more square than rectangular, so I remodelled the folds to fix this issue.
Then, I resized the structure to fit on A3, for a larger final prototype which was comparable to the final Miura-ori model, as well as to a simple flat sheet (control).