title: Anomalous strength of membranes with elastic ridges.
abstract: We report on a simulational study of the compression and buckling of elastic ridges formed by joining the boundary of a flat sheet to itself. Such ridges store energy anomalously: their resting energy scales as the linear size of the sheet to the 1/3 power. We find that the energy required to buckle such a ridge is a fixed multiple of the resting energy. Thus thin sheets with elastic ridges such as crumpled sheets are qualitatively stronger than smoothly bent sheets.
authors.affiliation: James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
authors.forename: B A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: DiDonna
authors.forename: T A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Witten