This paper presents a detailed experimental study of the evolution and shape of
reversible corrugations, or
wrinkles, in initially flat, linear-elastic and isotropic thin
foils subject to in-plane loads. Two sets of experiments were carried out, on a
rectangular membrane under simple shear and on a square membrane subjected to
two pairs of equal and opposite diagonal forces at the corners. Salient findings are
that: the wrinkle profile is generally well approximated by a half sine wave in the
longitudinal direction, with constant or linearly-varying transverse wavelength;
sudden changes in the shape of the membrane, accompanied by changes in the
number of wrinkles, occur in both cases; in the sheared membrane the wrinkle
pattern remains essentially unchanged for increasing shear displacement, whereas in
the square membrane a large diagonal wrinkle appears when the corner load ratio is
around 3.
