TY - JOUR
T1 - Cusp-Shaped Elastic Creases and Furrows
AU - Karpitschka, S.
AU - Eggers, J.
AU - Pandey, A.
AU - Snoeijer, J. H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.
PY - 2017/11/7
Y1 - 2017/11/7
N2 - The surfaces of growing biological tissues, swelling gels, and compressed rubbers do not remain smooth, but frequently exhibit highly localized inward folds. We reveal the morphology of this surface folding in a novel experimental setup, which permits us to deform the surface of a soft gel in a controlled fashion. The interface first forms a sharp furrow, whose tip size decreases rapidly with deformation. Above a critical deformation, the furrow bifurcates to an inward folded crease of vanishing tip size. We show experimentally and numerically that both creases and furrows exhibit a universal cusp shape, whose width scales like y3/2 at a distance y from the tip. We provide a similarity theory that captures the singular profiles before and after the self-folding bifurcation, and derive the length of the fold from finite deformation elasticity.
AB - The surfaces of growing biological tissues, swelling gels, and compressed rubbers do not remain smooth, but frequently exhibit highly localized inward folds. We reveal the morphology of this surface folding in a novel experimental setup, which permits us to deform the surface of a soft gel in a controlled fashion. The interface first forms a sharp furrow, whose tip size decreases rapidly with deformation. Above a critical deformation, the furrow bifurcates to an inward folded crease of vanishing tip size. We show experimentally and numerically that both creases and furrows exhibit a universal cusp shape, whose width scales like y3/2 at a distance y from the tip. We provide a similarity theory that captures the singular profiles before and after the self-folding bifurcation, and derive the length of the fold from finite deformation elasticity.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.198001
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.198001
M3 - Article
C2 - 29219527
AN - SCOPUS:85033581314
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 119
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
IS - 19
M1 - 198001
ER -