Elastic stabilisation of wrinkles in thin films by auxetic microstructure

Abstract Thin elastic sheets and membranes are known to wrinkle when they are stretched–the associated physics is highly non-linear. The unusual behaviour exhibited by thin films upon stretching when they possess auxetic structure, i.e. when their apparent Poisson’s ratio is negative, is reported here. Wrinkling is now suppressed within the bulk of auxetic films when tensioned, whereas localized creases confined to the clamps, which decay away exponentially, appear. These edge wrinkles are characterized for their amplitude and wavelength experimentally, theoretically, and computationally, which show excellent agreement with expected trends. The scaling for amplitude, wavelength and decay rate upon film properties and tension is obtained using simple analyses based on kinematic mismatch resulting from lateral Poisson’s expansion.