Developable surface
In mathematics, a developable surface (historically called a torse) is a smooth surface with zero Gaussian curvature. That is, it is a surface that can be flattened onto a plane without distortion (i.e. it can be bent without stretching or compression). Conversely, it is a surface which can be made by transforming a plane (i.e. "folding", "bending", "rolling", "cutting" and/or "gluing"). Because of these properties, developable surfaces are widely used in the design and fabrication of items to be made from sheet materials, ranging from textiles to sheet metal such as ductwork to shipbuilding.
Relatedly, in classical differential geometry, a development is the rolling of one smooth surface over another in Euclidean space. A surface is developable if it has a development.
All developable surfaces embedded in 3D-space are ruled surfaces (though hyperboloids are examples of ruled surfaces which are not developable). Because of this, many developable surfaces can be visualised as the surface formed by moving a straight line in space. For example, a cone is formed by keeping one end-point of a line fixed whilst moving the other end-point in a circle. However, there are developable surfaces in four-dimensional space which are not ruled.
