Mechanics of randomly folded thin materials

In this work, the mechanical properties of randomly folded thin sheets in the hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic stress states were studied. It is pointed out that under the hydrostatic compression the sheet, rigidity is governed by the volume dependence of its enthalpy, whereas in a non-hydrostatic stress state, the rigidity of folded sheets is controlled by the shape dependence of the Edwards entropy of the network of crumpling creases. Furthermore, the stress relaxation in folded sheets after uni-axial compression was studied. It was found that stress relaxation in folded elasto-plastic sheets differs from this in the folded predominantly plastic sheets and obeys an unusual relaxation law with the universal characteristic exponent.