Compressed thin sheet undergoes a crumpling transition

We study a slow and well-controlled compression of a thin sheet weakly adhered to a low-friction soft substrate. Initially, the sheet resists compression and prefers a flat state due to the deformation energy cost involved. However, beyond a certain threshold, the sheet transitions to a self-crumpling state. We show that this transition is driven by surface energy. The transition occurs at a well-defined value of critical compression for a wide range of experimental parameters. Near the transition point, the sheet’s compressibility increases rapidly and at the same time we find a diverging length scale at the transition, and a power-law increase in fold density beyond the transition point. We demonstrate that this transition can form the basis of a simple and scalable technique to do origami with extremely thin sheets.