Snap buckling of a confined thin elastic sheet

Abstract

A growing or compressed thin elastic sheet adhered to a rigid substrate can exhibit a buckling instability, forming an inward hump. Our study shows that the strip morphology depends on the delicate balance between the compression energy and the bending energy. We find that this instability is a first-order phase transition between the adhered solution and the buckled solution whose main control parameter is related to the sheet stretchability. In the nearly unstretchable regime, we provide an analytic expression for the critical threshold. Compressibility is the key assumption which allows us to resolve the apparent paradox of an unbounded pressure exerted on the external wall by a confined flexible loop.