Post-wrinkle bifurcations in elastic bilayers with modest contrast in modulus
Anesia Auguste, Lihua Jin, Zhigang Suo, Ryan C. Hayward
Extreme Mechanics Letters
Wrinkles, folds, creases and other elastic surface instabilities play a crucial role in many systems in nature and engineering. While surface instabilities of ideal bilayer structures with large contrasts in elastic stiffness are well understood, many natural and man-made structures are far from this ideal. To better understand the behavior of systems with modest stiffness contrast, in particular their secondary post-wrinkling bifurcations, we systematically vary the modulus contrast between the film and the substrate through a combination of experiments and finite element simulations. Above a modulus contrast of about 2, but below approximately 14, wrinkles represent the primary bifurcation mode, but can undergo two distinct types of secondary bifurcations upon further compression: (1) a direct transition from wrinkles to creases, and (2) wrinkles that first undergo period doubling, followed by a transition to creases.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352431616302012