Abstract
We study the wrinkling of a thin elastic sheet caused by a prescribed non-Euclidean metric. This is a model problem for the patterns seen, for example, in torn plastic sheets and the leaves of plants. Following the lead of other authors, we adopt a variational viewpoint, according to which the wrinkling is driven by minimization of an elastic energy subject to appropriate constraints and boundary conditions. We begin with a broad introduction, including a discussion of key examples (some well-known, others apparently new) that demonstrate the overall character of the problem. We then focus on how the minimum energy scales with respect to the sheet thickness \(h\) for certain classes of displacements. Our main result is that when deformations are subject to certain hypotheses, the minimum energy is of order \(h^{4/3}\). We also show that when deformations are subject to more restrictive hypotheses, the minimum energy is strictly larger – of order \(h\); it follows that energy minimization in the more restricted class is not a good model for the applications that motivate this work. Our results do not explain the cascade of wrinkles seen in some experimental and numerical studies, and they leave open the possibility that an energy scaling law better than \(h^{4/3}\) could be obtained by considering a larger class of deformations.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Stefan Müller for pointing out that the assumption \(u_h(x,y) \cdot e_1 = x\) is too rigid and for suggesting the ansatz we use to prove the \(h^{4/3}\) upper bound of Theorem 1. We also thank two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and suggestions. This work was begun while PB was a PhD student at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Support from NSF Grant DMS-0807347 is gratefully acknowledged. Support is gratefully acknowledged from NSF Grants DMS-0807347 and OISE-0967140.
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Communicated by Felix Otto.
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Bella, P., Kohn, R.V. Metric-Induced Wrinkling of a Thin Elastic Sheet. J Nonlinear Sci 24, 1147–1176 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00332-014-9214-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00332-014-9214-9