Dynamic Buckling of an Elastic Ring in a Soap Film.

Dynamic buckling may occur when a load is rapidly applied to, or removed from, an elastic object at rest. In contrast to its static counterpart, dynamic buckling offers a wide range of accessible patterns depending on the parameters of the system and the dynamics of the load. To study these effects, we consider experimentally the dynamics of an elastic ring in a soap film when part of the film is suddenly removed.

Dynamics of wrinkling in ultrathin elastic sheets.

The wrinkling of thin elastic objects provides a means of generating regular patterning at small scales in applications ranging from photovoltaics to microfluidic devices. Static wrinkle patterns are known to be governed by an energetic balance between the object's bending stiffness and an effective substrate stiffness, which may originate from a true substrate stiffness or from tension and curvature along the wrinkles. Here, we investigate dynamic wrinkling induced by the impact of a solid sphere onto an ultrathin polymer sheet floating on water.