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We have decided to discontinue the publication of preprints on our preprint server as of 1 March 2024. The publication culture within mathematics has changed so much due to the rise of repositories such as ArXiV (www.arxiv.org) that we are encouraging all institute members to make their preprints available there. An institute's repository in its previous form is, therefore, unnecessary. The preprints published to date will remain available here, but we will not add any new preprints here.

MiS Preprint
3/2004

Self-similar folding patterns and energy scaling in compressed elastic sheets

Sergio Conti, Antonio DeSimone and Stefan Müller

Abstract

Thin elastic sheets under isotropic compression, such as for example blisters formed by thin films which debonded from the substrate, can exhibit remarkably complex folding patterns. We discuss the scaling of the elastic energy with respect to the film thickness, and show that in certain regimes the optimal energy scaling can be reached by self-similar folding patterns that refine towards the boundary, in agreement with experimental observations. We then extend the analysis to anisotropic compression, and discuss a simplified scalar model which suggests the presence of a transition between a regime where the deformation is governed by global properties of the domain and another one where the direction of maximal compression dominates and the scale of the folds is mainly determined by the distance to the boundary in the direction of the folds themselves.

Received:
Jan 22, 2004
Published:
Jan 22, 2004

Related publications

inJournal
2005 Repository Open Access
Sergio Conti, Antonio DeSimone and Stefan Müller

Self-similar folding patterns and energy scaling in compressed elastic sheets

In: Computer methods in applied mechanics and engineering, 194 (2005) 21/24, pp. 2534-2549