Numerical analysis of wrinkle-influencing factors of thin membranes

A membrane is prone to wrinkle under a very small amount of compression when the stiffness in the direction perpendicular to wrinkles vanishes. This kind of abrupt change in the mechanical properties may make the membrane vulnerable to deformation with poor definition on the profile of the surface and other adverse influences on its performances. It is important to find the factors influencing the wrinkles and take measures to prevent the wrinkling from happening. In this paper, the winkle-influencing factors such as prestress and thickness of membrane, Poisson's ratio and Young's modulus of material are studied and two benchmark examples, i.e. a rectangular membrane under bending and an annular membrane under torsion are analyzed with the wrinkling model proposed by the authors previously. In addition, the similarity between the wrinkling and perfectly plastic deformations, the physical meaning of wrinkling strain and the finite element implementation of the proposed wrinkling model are also presented.