Local-buckling-induced elastic interaction between inclusions in a free-standing film

The local-buckling-induced elastic interaction between two circular inclusions in a free-standing film is reported using numerical simulation. The simulation relies on a continuum model based on the modified Föppl-von Kármán plate theory for a film with arbitrarily distributed eigenstrain and eigencurvature. It is shown that due to the overlapping of the nonlinear local buckling the elastic interaction between the two inclusions with the same eigencurvature is repulsive, while the interaction between them with the opposite eigencurvature is attractive. The interaction strength in both cases decays with their mutual distance. In addition, the inclusion with positive/negative eigenstrain above critical values can trigger an axisymmetric/non-axisymmetric buckling, respectively, and the buckling induced elastic interaction between the two inclusions with eigenstrain shows a nonmonotonic behavior.