Three-dimensional structure of a sheet crumpled into a ball.

ABSTRACT: When a thin sheet is crushed into a small three-dimensional volume, it invariably forms a structure with a low volume fraction but high resistance to further compression. Being a far-from-equilibrium process, forced crumpling is not necessarily amenable to a statistical description in which the parameters of the initially flat sheet and the final confinement fully specify the resulting crumpled state. Instead, the internal geometry and mechanical properties of the crumpled ball may reflect the history of its preparation. Our X-ray microtomography experiments reveal that the internal three-dimensional geometry of a crumpled ball is in many respects isotropic and homogeneous. In these respects, crumpling recapitulates other classic nonequilibrium problems such as turbulence, where a system d

SUBMITTER: Cambou AD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3169141 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature