Computation of the deformation of rhombi-slit kirigami

Abstract

Kirigami are part of the larger class of mechanical metamaterials, which exhibit exotic properties. This article focuses on rhombi-slits, which is a specific type of kirigami. A nonlinear kinematic model was previously proposed as a second order divergence-form PDE with a possibly degenerate, and sign-changing coefficient matrix. We first propose to study the existence of solutions to a regularization of this equation by using the limiting absorption principle. Then, we propose a finite element method with complex polynomials to approximate the solutions to the nonlinear equation. Finally, simulations are compared with experimental results.