Montreal, October 1st, 2025 – A team of engineers from Polytechnique Montréal reported today in Nature a new and unique parachute concept inspired by the Japanese art of kirigami. This simple, robust and low-cost approach has a wide variety of potential applications ranging from humanitarian aid to space exploration.

Kirigami is a technique that modifies the mechanical properties of a sheet of material by making precise folds and cuts to it. Children use it to make snowflakes out of paper, and engineers have used it to create extensible structures, flexible medical devices and deployable spatial structures. However, kirigami techniques have never been applied to parachute production.
The Polytechnique Montréal research team has now changed all that.

A parachute cut from a plastic sheet

Through a groundbreaking project, led by professors David Mélançon and Frédérick Gosselin from Polytechnique Montréal’s Mechanical Engineering Department, a new type of parachute made from a plastic sheet cut in a “closed-loop” kirigami pattern as been developed.

The pattern used gives the sheet of plastic new mechanical properties. In free fall, it assumes the shape of an upside-down bell when any type of weight or object is attached to its centre.

“One advantage of this parachute is that it quickly stabilizes and doesn’t pitch, regardless of the release angle,” says Mélançon, co-author of the article. “And unlike conventional parachutes, it follows a strict ballistic descent trajectory.”

The research team believes these characteristics could be useful for purposes ranging from parcel delivery in remote areas to exploration of Mars in outer space. However, in their view, the most likely and practical application in the near future is humanitarian aid deliveries of water, food and medicine, particularly since the parachute has a very low production cost.

“We made these parachutes by laser cutting, but a simple die-cutting press would also do the trick,” Mélançon says. “What’s more, the parachute is seamless and is attached to the payload by a single suspension line, making it easy to use and to deploy.”

The researchers tested their concept through numerical simulations, wind-tunnel tests, laboratory drops and outdoor drops from a drone. The tests point towards a considerable potential that has yet to be explored.

“The parachute’s behaviour doesn’t change even when the size of the device is augmented,” says Frédérick Gosselin. “This suggests that it could be scaled up for larger applications.”

The Polytechnique Montréal research team is now working on identifying new cutting patterns to endow the parachutes with different and new properties. “We want to change the patterns in order to go even further: the parachutes could descend in a spiral, for example, or glide before dropping,” says Mélançon. “We would also like to be able to vary the trajectory of descent depending on the payload, so the cargo could be sorted as the parachutes come down to earth. This is a whole new design endeavour that opens up a multitude of possibilities.”

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Martin Primeau
Media Relations Officer – Science Outreach
Polytechnique Montréal
514-805-0797
martin.primeau@polymtl.ca