Wrinkling of pressurized elastic shells

Abstract

We study the formation of localized structures formed by the point loading of an internally pressurized elastic shell. While unpressurized shells (such as a ping pong ball) buckle into polygonal structures, we show that pressurized shells are subject to a wrinkling instability. We present scaling laws for the critical indentation at which wrinkling occurs and the number of wrinkles formed in terms of the internal pressurization and material properties of the shell. These results are validated by numerical simulations. We show that the evolution of the wrinkle length with increasing indentation can be understood for highly pressurized shells from membrane theory. These results suggest that the position and number of wrinkles may be used in combination to give simple methods for the estimation of the mechanical properties of highly pressurized shells.