Reversibility of crumpling on compressed thin sheets

Abstract

Compressing thin sheets usually yields the formation of singularities which focus curvature and stretching on points or lines. In particular, following the common experience of crumpled paper where a paper sheet is crushed in a paper ball, one might guess that elastic singularities should be the rule beyond some compression level. In contrast, we show here that, somewhat surprisingly, compressing a sheet between cylinders make singularities spontaneously disappear at large compression. This “stress defocusing” phenomenon is qualitatively explained from scale-invariance and further linked to a criterion based on a balance between stretching and curvature energies on defocused states. This criterion is made quantitative using the scalings relevant to sheet elasticity and compared to experiment. These results are synthesized in a phase diagram completed with plastic transitions and buckling saturation. They provide a renewed vision of elastic singularities as a thermodynamic condensed phase where stress is focused, in competition with a regular diluted phase where stress is defocused. The physical differences between phases is emphasized by determining experimentally the mechanical response when stress is focused or defocused and by recovering the corresponding scaling laws. In this phase diagram, different compression routes may be followed by constraining differently the two principal curvatures of a sheet. As evidenced here, this may provide an efficient way of compressing a sheet that avoids the occurrence of plastic damages by inducing a spontaneous regularization of geometry and stress.

Graphical abstract