Surface energy-driven crumpling transition in a thin sheet under compression
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866914185469755392 |
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| author | Chawla, Aashna Kumar, Deepak |
| author_facet | Chawla, Aashna Kumar, Deepak |
| contents | In our common experience, crumpling a sheet requires external compressive force and leads to a random network of folds. However, thin sheets have been theoretically predicted to spontaneously transition from a flat to a crumpled state driven by thermal fluctuations, a phenomenon that has been elusive in experiments. We report the first observation of a similar crumpling transition driven instead by surface energy. Using a sensitive experimental protocol, when we gently compress a thin polymer sheet weakly adhered to a hydrogel substrate it transitions to a self-crumpling state at a well defined critical compression independent of system details. The transition is marked by the percolation of a fold network, and a power law increase in fold density. Most remarkably, the crumpled state shows a tunable order of folds establishing the phenomenon's potential as a simple and scalable technique to do origami with extremely thin sheets. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_06685 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Surface energy-driven crumpling transition in a thin sheet under compression Chawla, Aashna Kumar, Deepak Soft Condensed Matter Materials Science Statistical Mechanics Pattern Formation and Solitons In our common experience, crumpling a sheet requires external compressive force and leads to a random network of folds. However, thin sheets have been theoretically predicted to spontaneously transition from a flat to a crumpled state driven by thermal fluctuations, a phenomenon that has been elusive in experiments. We report the first observation of a similar crumpling transition driven instead by surface energy. Using a sensitive experimental protocol, when we gently compress a thin polymer sheet weakly adhered to a hydrogel substrate it transitions to a self-crumpling state at a well defined critical compression independent of system details. The transition is marked by the percolation of a fold network, and a power law increase in fold density. Most remarkably, the crumpled state shows a tunable order of folds establishing the phenomenon's potential as a simple and scalable technique to do origami with extremely thin sheets. |
| title | Surface energy-driven crumpling transition in a thin sheet under compression |
| topic | Soft Condensed Matter Materials Science Statistical Mechanics Pattern Formation and Solitons |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06685 |