The shape of telephone cord blisters

Abstract

Formation of telephone cord blisters as a result of buckling delamination is widely observed in many compressed film-substrate systems. Here we report a universal morphological feature of such blisters characterized by their sequential sectional profiles exhibiting a butterfly shape using atomic force microscopy. Two kinds of buckle morphologies, light and heavy telephone cord blisters, are observed and differentiated by measurable geometrical parameters. Based on the Föppl-von Kármán plate theory, the observed three-dimensional features of the telephone cord blister are predicted by the proposed approximate analytical model and simulation. The latter further replicates growth and coalescence of the telephone cord into complex buckling delamination patterns observed in the experiment.