  Archetypal falling behaviors of impervious objects are classified into four
modes: fluttering, tumbling, steady descent and chaotic motion. The classical
scenario predicts these behaviors to be affected by two dimensionless
quantities: dimensionless inertia and Reynolds number. In this article we
explore experimentally the effect of permeability and porosity on the falling
regimes of porous plates. By drilling several hole distributions in rectangular
plates, both permeability and porosity are varied systematically. We discover
that the introduction of porosity affects the stability of the falling regimes
eliminating tumbling. Using a phenomenological model we show that a decrease in
circulation induced by the introduction of holes is the primary mechanism for
stabilizing the plates' trajectories.
