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Crumpling a Thin Sheet

Kittiwit Matan·Rachel Williams·Thomas A. Witten·Sidney R. Nagel
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Abstract

Crumpled sheets have a surprisingly large resistance to further compression. We have studied the crumpling of thin sheets of Mylar under different loading conditions. When placed under a fixed compressive force, the size of a crumpled material decreases logarithmically in time for periods up to three weeks. We also find hysteretic behavior when measuring the compression as a function of applied force. By using a pre-treating protocol, we control this hysteresis and find reproducible scaling behavior for the size of the crumpled material as a function of the applied force.

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Kittiwit Matan, Rachel Williams, Thomas A. Witten, Sidney R. Nagel. 2001-11-07. Crumpling a Thin Sheet. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.88.076101

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