mechanical instability

Soft elastic layers with top and bottom surfaces adhered to rigid bodies are abundant in biological organisms and engineering applications. As the rigid bodies are pulled apart, the stressed layer can exhibit various modes of mechanical instabilities. In cases where the layer’s thickness is much smaller than its length and width, the dominant modes that have been studied are the cavitation, interfacial and fingering instabilities. Here we report a new mode of instability which emerges if the thickness of the constrained elastic layer is comparable to or smaller than its width.

We would like to invite you to submit abstracts to Symposium D-14: Non-linear Response of Highly Deformable Structures within the “Mechanics of Solids and Structures” track at the 53rd Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science (SES 2016), hosted by the University of Maryland, October 2-5, 2016.

The deadline for abstract submission is June 15, 2016.

Symposium Technical Description

Smoothening creases on surfaces of strain-stiffening materials

Anesia Auguste, Lihua Jin, Zhigang Suo, Ryan C. Hayward. The role of substrate pre-stretch on post-wrinkling bifurcations. Soft Matter 10, 6520-6529(2014).

Atsushi Takei, Lihua Jin, John W Hutchinson, Hiroyuki Fujita, Ridge localizations and networks in thin films compressed by incremental release of large equi-biaxial substrate pre-stretch, Advanced Materials, 2014, 26 (24): 4061-4067.

W.L. Shan, Z. Chen, C.P. Broedersz, A.A. Gumaste, W.O. Soboyejo, C.P. Brangwynne, Soft Matter, 9:194-199, 2013. 

In this paper, we investigate short wavelength buckling of a thin elastic rod embedded in an elastic gelatin biopolymer network. Using a combination of micro-mechanical testing, microscopic imaging, as well as theory, we show that the buckling penetration depth can be tuned by varying the mechanical properties of the rod and the rod–gel interface.

Bistable structures, exemplified
by the Venus flytrap and slap bracelets, can switch between different
functional shapes upon actuation, and have important applications in
mechanical/electro-mechanical devices ranging from bio-inspired robots to
deployable aeroplane wings. Despite numerous efforts in modeling such large
deformation of shell structures, the roles of mechanical and nonlinear geometric
effects on bistability remains elusive. Closely related, emerging challenges
include modeling the spontaneous curving and buckling of thin objects such as

This symposium is part of the Spring 2008 ACS National Meeting and Exposition , to be held at New Orleans, Louisiana, from Sunday, April 6 to Thursday, April 10, 2008.

Organizers: Christopher M. Stafford (NIST), Adam J. Nolte (NIST), Rui Huang (UT Austin)

Sponsors: ACS Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) and National Science Foundation

Technical Program: