Mesoscale structure of wrinkle patterns and defect-proliferated liquid crystalline phases.

ABSTRACT: Thin solids often develop elastic instabilities and subsequently complex, multiscale deformation patterns. Revealing the organizing principles of this spatial complexity has ramifications for our understanding of morphogenetic processes in plant leaves and animal epithelia and perhaps even the formation of human fingerprints. We elucidate a primary source of this morphological complexity-an incompatibility between an elastically favored "microstructure" of uniformly spaced wrinkles and a "macrostructure" imparted through the wrinkle director and dictated by confinement forces. Our theory is borne out of experiments and simulations of floating sheets subjected to radial stretching. By analyzing patterns of grossly radial wrinkles we find two sharply distinct morphologies: defect-free patter

SUBMITTER: Tovkach O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7049117 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature