Smooth Cascade of Wrinkles at the Edge of a Floating Elastic Film

J Huang, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
B Davidovitch, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
C Santangelo, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
T Russell
N Menon, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

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This is the prepublished version harvested from ArXiv. The published version is located at http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v105/i3/e038302

Abstract

An ultrathin polymer sheet floating on a fluid forms a periodic pattern of parallel wrinkles when subjected to uniaxial compression. The wave number of the wrinkle pattern increases sharply near the fluid meniscus where the translational symmetry of this one-dimensional corrugated profile is broken. We show that the observed multiscale morphology is controlled by a new “softness” number that quantifies the relative strength of capillary forces at the edge and the rigidity of the bulk pattern. We discover a new elastic cascade by which the wrinkling pattern in the bulk is smoothly matched to the fine structure at the edge by a discrete series of higher Fourier modes.