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Kirigami-inspired parachutes with programmable reconfiguration

Nature volume 646, pages 88–94 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The art of kirigami allows programming a sheet to deform into a particular manner with a pattern of cuts, endowing it with exotic mechanical properties and behaviours1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17. Here we program discs to deform into stably falling parachutes as they deploy under fluid–structure interaction. Parachutes are expensive and delicate to manufacture, which limits their use for humanitarian airdrops or drone delivery. Laser cutting a closed-loop kirigami pattern18 in a disc induces porosity and flexibility into an easily fabricated parachute. By performing wind tunnel testing and numerical simulations using a custom flow-induced reconfiguration model19, we develop a design tool to realize kirigami-inspired parachutes. Guided by these results, we fabricate parachutes from the centimetre to the metre scale and test them in realistic conditions. We show that at low load-to-area ratios, kirigami-inspired parachutes exhibit a comparable terminal velocity to conventional ones. However, unlike conventional parachutes that require a gliding angle for vertical stability20 and fall at random far from a target, our kirigami-inspired parachutes always fall near the target, regardless of their initial release angle. These kinds of parachutes could limit material losses during airdropping as well as decrease manufacturing costs and complexity.

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Fig. 1: Kinematics of free-falling kirigami discs.
Fig. 2: Reconfiguration of kirigami discs under flow.
Fig. 3: Design space of the kirigami discs.
Fig. 4: Performance of kirigami-inspired parachutes.
Fig. 5: Kirigami-inspired parachutes in realistic conditions.

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Data availability

All wind-tunnel and tensile testing raw data are included as Supplementary Data 1 and 2. The FIRM is openly available at GitHub (https://github.com/lm2-poly/FIRM).

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Adler and M. Wierre for performing initial experimental tests of reconfigurable kirigami structures. D.L. acknowledges Y. Liétard for assembling the large-scale parachute, as well as G. Beltrame, H. M. Bong, M. Boukor, J. Garon, P. Gerard, A. Sibille and M. Verville for their help in testing the large-scale parachutes. We acknowledge the financial support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (funding reference nos. RGPIN-2019-7072 and RGPIN-2023-04463). D.L. acknowledges funding by a NSERC BESC-M scholarship, the Supplément pour Études à l'Étranger BESC-SEEMS of NSERC, and a master’s scholarship of Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Nature et Technologies. S.R. acknowledges support from a JCJC grant of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-20-CE30-0009-01).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Multiscale Mechanics (LM2), Department of Mechanical Engineering, Research Center for High Performance Polymer and Composite Systems (CREPEC), Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Danick Lamoureux, Jérémi Fillion, Frédérick P. Gosselin & David Melancon

  2. LadHyX, CNRS, École Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France

    Sophie Ramananarivo

Authors
  1. Danick Lamoureux
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  2. Jérémi Fillion
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  3. Sophie Ramananarivo
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  4. Frédérick P. Gosselin
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Contributions

D.L., S.R., F.P.G. and D.M. proposed and developed the research idea. D.L. designed, fabricated and tested the kirigami disks and parachutes for the initial submission of the manuscript. J.F. fabricated the kirigami parachutes for the revised version of the manuscript. D.L. conducted the numerical simulations. D.L., J.F., S.R., F.P.G. and D.M. wrote the paper. S.R., F.P.G. and D.M. supervised the research.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Frédérick P. Gosselin or David Melancon.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Lateral displacement of plain and kirigami disks during free fall.

a. Plain circular disk. b. Cutting pattern of kirigami disk Design A. c. Cutting pattern of kirigami disk Design B. d. Lateral displacement as a function of vertical height during free fall for ten disks with no cuts (d), ten disks with cutting pattern Design A (e), and ten disks with cutting pattern Design B (f).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Manufacturing method for both small and meter-scale parachutes.

a. Laser cutting process using the TROTEC Speedy 400 Flexx, leading to (b) small parachute specimens. b. Laser cutting of large parachute specimen sectors and c. adhesive patches to link the parachute sectors. e. Assembly method between two sectors leading to f. assembling the patched sectors into the whole parachute. g. Complete assembled meter-scale parachute h. observing mode \({\mathcal{K}}\) under its own weight up to i. the height of one of the authors.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Mechanical characterization of the base material.

Maximum displacement wmax of different Mylar sheets of lengths L obtained through bending tests. Due to the laminated nature of the sheet, an anisotropy is obtained when the sheet is bending in different directions, which is illustrated through the different fits.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Force-displacement curves of different closed-loop kirigami specimens.

a. Hysteresis and error of the force-displacement curve of the Design B kirigami disk. The line shows the average of six force-displacement curves over three traction cycles while the shaded area shows three times the standard deviation. b-f. The force-displacement curves of the specimens with varied b. radial spacing Δr2, c. radial distribution exponent n, d. number of angular sectors Nθ, e. cutting ratio Θ and f. thickness t also present initial stiffnesses of the tested specimens.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Comparison between experimental and numerical force-displacement curves of Design B.

Force applied F to the kirigami disk designs to obtain the displacement of the center w using experiments and numerical simulations. Accompanying images show the deformed shape of Design B at different displacements, which are similar to the deformed shapes of Design A, as the deformation is forced to be in mode \({\mathcal{K}}\).

Extended Data Fig. 6 Drag of the kirigami specimens D according to the flow velocity U∞.

a. Total measured drag of a rigid disk along with the contributions from the stand and the isolated specimen. b-f. The drag-velocity curves of the specimens with with varied b. radial spacing Δr2, c. radial distribution exponent n, d. number of angular sectors Nθ, e. cutting ratio Θ and f. thickness t, where the markers show the deformation mode (diamonds are mode \({\mathcal{K}}\) and circles is mode \({\mathcal{C}}\)).

Extended Data Fig. 7 Elongation of the kirigami specimens w under flow velocity U∞.

a. Schematic of the deformed kirigami disk. b-f. Displacement-velocity curves of the specimens with with varied b. radial spacing Δr2, c. radial distribution exponent n, d. number of angular sectors Nθ, e. cutting ratio Θ and f. thickness t, where the markers show the deformation mode (diamonds are mode \({\mathcal{K}}\) and circles is mode \({\mathcal{C}}\)).

Extended Data Fig. 8 Magnitude of the lateral acceleration as a function of time during fall.

a. Results for Design A deforming in the cylindrical mode \({\mathcal{C}}\). b. Results for Design B deforming in the kirigami mode \({\mathcal{K}}\). The lines and shaded areas are the average and standard deviation of three fall experiments.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Performance of a conventional parachute.

a. Vertical acceleration, \(\ddot{z}\), and velocity, \(\dot{z}\), of the conventional parachute. The solid line and shaded area are the average and standard deviation of the vertical acceleration of three fall experiments measured with an accelerometer. The dashed line is the vertical velocity obtained by integrating numerically the mean vertical acceleration of three fall experiments. b. Lateral displacement of the conventional parachute across multiple drop tests. Inset shows the parachute by Fruity Chutes.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file includes Supporting Methods, Supplementary Figs. 1–5, legends for Supplementary Videos 1–5, legends for Supplementary Data 1 and 2, and Supplementary References.

Supplementary Data 1

Raw data from the experimental wind-tunnel test conducted on the kirigami specimens.

Supplementary Data 2

Raw data from the experimental tensile tests on Design A and Design B.

Peer Review File

Supplementary Video 1

Manufacturing and drop tests: overview of the manufacturing process and drop testing of our kirigami-inspired parachutes.

Supplementary Video 2

Wind tunnel testing and simulations: kirigami disks deforming in mode C and K in the wind-tunnel and corresponding FIRM simulations.

Supplementary Video 3

Manufacturing of large-scale parachutes: time-lapse of the manufacturing and opening of a meter-scale parachute.

Supplementary Video 4

Falling behaviour of a large-scale kirigami-inspired parachute in realistic conditions: dropping of a water bottle from a drone at 60 m elevation using our kirigami-inspired parachute.

Supplementary Video 5

Mass dropping of two different populations of kirigami-inspired parachutes: distinct falling behaviour of kirigami parachute modes C and K leads to self-sorting during a drop test.

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Lamoureux, D., Fillion, J., Ramananarivo, S. et al. Kirigami-inspired parachutes with programmable reconfiguration. Nature 646, 88–94 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09515-9

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