A flat sheet of paper with simple cuts can generate flight-like lift even when held perpendicular to the wind.
March 31, 2026
Original Paper
Reconfigurable kirigami mesostructure enables modulation of lift and drag
arXiv · 2603.27227
The Takeaway
Usually, a flat surface held against the wind just creates drag, but by using 'kirigami' (the art of paper cutting), researchers created a structure that buckles into a wing-like architecture. This allows a single material to switch between generating drag and lift on demand just by stretching it.
From the abstract
Flexible surfaces can modulate fluid forces through deformation, enabling passive adaptation to flow conditions that improves aerodynamic performance, reduces drag and delays stall. Here we show that kirigami sheets, planar surfaces patterned with arrays of parallel slits, provide a simple route to tunable aerodynamics by transforming into three-dimensional porous meso-architectures that can be reversibly reconfigured in flow. When stretched and exposed to cross-flow, parallel-cut kirigami buckl