Universality in the mechanics of soft Kirigami

Abstract

Recently, simple scaling laws concerning the mechanical response and mechanical transition of Kirigami have been revealed through agreement between theory and experiment for kirigami made of paper [M. Isobe and K. Okumura, Sci. Rep. 2016]. Here, we provide experimental data obtained from kirigami made of soft elastic sheets to demonstrate good agreement with previous theories, although a number of assumptions in the theory are violated and the elastic modulus is three orders of magnitude smaller in the present case. This remarkable universality in the mechanics of Kirigami, which could be useful for applications, is reported with physical insights based on previous theories.