Depressions at the surface of an elastic spherical shell submitted to external pressure

Abstract

Elasticity theory calculations predict the number N of depressions that appear at the surface of a spherical thin shell submitted to an external isotropic pressure. In a model that mainly considers curvature deformations, we show that N only depends on the relative volume variation. Equilibrium configurations show single depression (N=1) for small volume variations, then N increases up to 6, before decreasing more abruptly due to steric constraints, down to N=1 again for maximal volume variations. These predictions are consistent with previously published experimental observations.

References in corpus (1)

• Virus shapes and buckling transitions in spherical shells

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