Thin-sheet theory for soft materials

Abstract

Slender sheets of viscous liquid can show features characteristic of elastic materials, such as buckling under compression. Likewise, thin sheets of solid material subject to sufficiently high stress can deform plastically, i.e. flow. In this volume, Hewitt & Balmforth (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 908, 2021, A5) explore the territory between these regimes, by developing asymptotic theories for thin viscoelastic and elasto-viscoplastic sheets, focusing primarily on regimes in which bending deformations dominate stretching. Their results reveal a rich phenomenology and provide new theoretical tools with which to probe thin layers of soft materials.