Spherical membranes subjected to vertical concentrated loads: an experimental study

Buckling and wrinkling of prestressed membranes

“…The computed deformed shape shown in Fig. 7a agrees very well with the experimental tests presented in [30]. In the high pressure case (p = 5000 Pa), the pinching force F can be given larger values and the folds are more visible, as shown in Fig.…”

“…By definition, the axisymmetrical approach does not exhibit wrinkles. Experimental investigations of this problem were also made by Szyszkowski and Glockner in [30], who showed that wrinkles are displayed for various pinching forces. A recent numerical computation was carried out by Stanuszek [21] who developed a new method for catching wrinkles using the cable analogy.…”

“…7 shows the bifurcated solutions of the pinched hemisphere problem for two inflation pressures, p=120 and 5000 Pa (the same values as in Refs. [30,21], respectively).…”

“…For the purpose of comparing with the results in [21,30], the present study uses the same geometry and material data as therein. Thus, in the reference configuration, the thickness of the membrane is taken as h 0 = 25.4 m and the radius as R 0 = 0.155 m. Note that the radius-thickness ratio is R 0 /h 0 = 6102, which means that the membrane is very thin.…”

Deflections of a rubber membrane

“…Pamplona and Bevilacqua (1992) considered a similar problem for both neo-Hookean and Mooney-Rivlin materials, and the resulting non-linear problem was solved using a numerical scheme based on the Picard-iteration technique. The problem of finite deformation and stability of spherical membranes under axisymmetric concentrated loads has been investigated, both experimentally and computationally, by Glockner and Vishwanath (1972), Szyszkowski and Glockner (1987) and Dacko and Glockner (1988). Non-linear problems arising as a result of ponding instabilities in membranes due to fluid accumulation are discussed by Tuan (1998).…”