Date of Award

August 2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Physics

Advisor(s)

Mark Bowick

Second Advisor

Teng Zhang

Keywords

buckling, crumpling, graphene, kirigami, membrane, thermalized

Subject Categories

Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Abstract

In this dissertation, we study the thermal behavior of two-dimensional sheets and ribbons. We study the effects of thermal fluctuations on the crumpling transition of elastic sheets. Existing two-dimensional sheets have a crumpling temperature which is very high and the crumpling transition has not been observed experimentally. We propose a mechanism using which one can tune this crumpling transition by changing the shape and geometry of >the sheet. We perform extensive molecular dynamics simulations by perforating the sheet with a dense array of holes and find that the critical temperature is a function of the removed area. Lastly, we look at clamped thermalized ribbons and study thermalized Euler buckling. Again, we perform molecular dynamics simulations by clamping one end and allowing the other end to slide to get the projected thermal length of the ribbon. We compress this system and observe a distinct two-state dynamics of the center of mass along with thermalized Euler buckling.

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Open Access

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