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Unpublished Paper
Mechanics of Large Folds in Thin Interfacial Films
(2014)
  • Vincent Demery
  • Benny Davidovitch, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • Christian D Santangelo
Abstract

A thin film at a liquid interface responds to uniaxial confinement by wrinkling and then by folding; its shape and energy have been computed exactly before self contact. Here, we address the mechanics of large folds, i.e. folds that absorb a length much larger than the wrinkle wavelength. With scaling arguments and numerical simulations, we show that the antisymmetric fold is energetically favorable and can absorb any excess length at zero pressure. Then, motivated by puzzles arising in the comparison of this simple model to experiments on lipid monolayers and capillary rafts, we discuss how to incorporate film weight, selfadhesion and energy dissipation.

Disciplines
Publication Date
October 14, 2014
Comments
Pre-published version downloaded from archive ArXiv. Published version located at http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.134501
Citation Information
Vincent Demery, Benny Davidovitch and Christian D Santangelo. "Mechanics of Large Folds in Thin Interfacial Films" (2014)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/benny_davidovitch/13/