Morphological Phases of Crumpled Wire

TL;DR

This paper explores the different morphological phases of crumpled wires in two dimensions, presenting a phase diagram and analyzing the mechanical properties and loop statistics through experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a morphological phase diagram for 2D crumpled wires and characterizes their structural and mechanical properties with experimental and simulation data.

Findings

Identification of distinct morphological phases

Power-law increase in the number of loops during crumpling

Power-law divergence of bulk stiffness in crumpled structures

Abstract

We find that in two dimensions wires can crumple into different morphologies and present the associated morphological phase diagram. Our results are based on experiments with different metallic wires and confirmed by numerical simulations using a discrete element model. We show that during crumpling, the number of loops increases according to a power-law with different exponents in each morphology. Furthermore, we observe a power-law divergence of the structure's bulk stiffness similar to what is observed in forced crumpling of membranes.