title: Elastic building blocks for confined sheets.
abstract: We study the behavior of thin elastic sheets that are bent and strained under a weak, smooth confinement. We show that the emerging shapes exhibit the coexistence of two types of domains. A focused-stress patch is subject to a geometric, piecewise-inextensibility constraint, whereas a diffuse-stress region is characterized by a mechanical constraint-the dominance of a single component of the stress tensor. We discuss the implications of our findings for the analysis of elastic sheets under various types of forcing.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 01003, USA.
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Schroll
authors.forename: Eleni
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Katifori
authors.forename: Benny
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Davidovitch