Tuning the mechanical properties and crumpling temperature of elastic sheets through geometry

by David Yllanes

Wednesday 30 May 2018, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

Thermalised membranes without distant self-avoidance are believed to undergo a crumpling transition when the microscopic bending rigidity is comparable to kT. However, most potential physical realisations of such sheets have a bending stiffness well in excess of experimentally achievable temperatures and are therefore unlikely ever to access the crumpling regime. In this talk I propose a mechanism to tune the onset of the crumpling transition by altering the geometry and topology of the sheet, using scalable kirigami principles. These results open a path for an experimental study of thermal crumpling and for the design of mechanical metamaterials with graphene.