Kirigami sheets in fluid flow

Abstract

Kirigami patterned materials have found several applications in recent years due to their ability to assume complicated shapes and exhibit emergent physical properties when exposed to external forces. Consisting of an array of cuts in a thin material, fabrication of these patterns can be quite simple. Here we show that when they are placed in fluid flow, kirigami cut sheets with various patterns produce a variety of flow patterns in the wake. Through several sets of experiments, we show that kirigami sheets placed in flow can undergo static or dynamic flow-induced instabilities as a result of which they can buckle or undergo limit cycle oscillations, or they can remain stable while undergoing very large elongations. These structural responses produce several different types of fluid patterns in the wake. We show that vortices both at small scales (scales comparable with the size of the individual kirigami cuts) and large scale (scales comparable with the size of the sheet) are formed in the wake of kirigami sheets. We also show that jets of different sizes can be formed and directed passively using kirigami sheets. These results show the potential of kirigami sheets for passive flow control.