title: Smooth cascade of wrinkles at the edge of a floating elastic film.
abstract: An ultrathin polymer sheet floating on a fluid forms a periodic pattern of parallel wrinkles when subjected to uniaxial compression. The wave number of the wrinkle pattern increases sharply near the fluid meniscus where the translational symmetry of this one-dimensional corrugated profile is broken. We show that the observed multiscale morphology is controlled by a new "softness" number that quantifies the relative strength of capillary forces at the edge and the rigidity of the bulk pattern. We discover a new elastic cascade by which the wrinkling pattern in the bulk is smoothly matched to the fine structure at the edge by a discrete series of higher Fourier modes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA.
authors.forename: Jiangshui
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Benny
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Davidovitch
authors.forename: Christian D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Santangelo
authors.forename: Thomas P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.forename: Narayanan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Menon