Mechanical instabilities are ubiquitous on the surfaces of soft materials. Harnessing various modes of surface instabilities can create intricate and versatile morphologies that can be used in many practical applications such as stretchable electronics, smart surfaces, and adaptive lenses. To better understand surface instabilities in various material systems, we employ theory, simulation, and experiments to study various surface modes, including wrinkles, Euler buckling, and rigid rotation in an elastic bilayer system, and harness the wrinkle-to-ridge transition to achieve high aspect ratio wrinkles. Moreover, we also investigate the crease instability in plastic materials and hydrogels and ratcheting instability in plastic liquids.
Relevant papers on this topic.
- Yang, J., Illeperuma, W. and Suo, Z., 2020. Inelasticity increases the critical strain for the onset of creases on hydrogels. Extreme Mechanics Letters, p.100966.
- Yang, J., Jin, L., Hutchinson, J.W. and Suo, Z., 2019. Plasticity retards the formation of creases. Journal of the Mechanics and
Physics of Solids, 123, pp.305-314. - Ouchi, T.#, Yang, J.#, Suo, Z. and Hayward, R.C., 2018. Effects of Stiff Film Pattern Geometry on Surface Buckling Instabilities of Elastic Bilayers. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 10(27), pp.23406-23413
- Auguste, A., Yang, J., Jin, L., Chen, D., Suo, Z. and Hayward, R.C., 2018. Formation of high aspect ratio wrinkles and ridges on elastic bilayers with small thickness contrast. Soft Matter, 14, 8545-8551
- Huang, J.#, Yang, J.#, Jin, L., Clarke, D.R. and Suo, Z., 2016. Pattern Formation in Plastic Liquid Films on Elastomers by Ratcheting. Soft Matter, 12(16), pp.3820-3827.
- Yang, J. and Nie, G., 2014. Analysis of Sinusoidal Interfacial Wrinkling of an Anisotropic Film Sandwiched Between Two Compliant Layers. Journal of Applied Mechanics, 81(9), p.091013.