#8 Wrinkles and all

Wrinkles are ubiquitous in nature, occurring not just in the skins of many animals and in plants, but even in single-cell organisms. These patterns have practical functions and can also confer a survival advantage. And they are invaluable when attempting to improve nature, e.g., by preventing microbial adhesion at the interfaces of implantable biomedical devices. In this project we propose to study the formation of wrinkles in a simple model consisting of a thin stiff film deposited on a thick soft substrate, as the latter imposes various deformations on the former. This will be done by numerically solving the equations of elasticity theory for a range of initial conditions and material parameters, which will require optimising existing computer codes.

The figure shows a numerical solution of the evolution equation for the wrinkle pattern, obtained by us using Python, for two systems with periodic boundary conditions.

Prerequisites: knowledge of programming languages beyond python (C/C++ desirable).

Project suitable for one student (preferably 3rd year).