Regimes of wrinkling in an indented floating elastic sheet

Abstract

A thin, elastic sheet floating on the surface of a liquid bath wrinkles when poked at its centre. We study the onset of wrinkling as well as the evolution of the pattern as indentation progresses far beyond the wrinkling threshold. We use tension field theory to describe the macroscopic properties of the deformed film and show that the system passes through a host of different regimes, even while the deflections and strains remain small. We show that the effect of the finite size of the sheet ultimately plays a key role in determining the location of the wrinkle pattern, and obtain scaling relations that characterize the number of wrinkles at threshold and its variation as the indentation progresses. Some of our predictions are confirmed by recent experiments of Ripp \emph{et al.} [arxiv: 1804.02421].

22 pages, 11 figures, revised version

References in corpus (7)

• Mechanics of freely-suspended ultrathin layered materials
• Indentation metrology of clamped, ultra-thin elastic sheets
• Indentation of ultrathin elastic films and the emergence of asymptotic isometry
• The Liquid Blister Test
• Regimes of wrinkling in pressurized elastic shells
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