Static response of elastic inflated wrinkled membranes

In this paper we present an effective numerical algorithm for determining the equilibrium shapes of inflated elastic membranes susceptible to wrinkling. The use of a two-state constitutive law and the introduction of a suitable criterion allow for accounting for wrinkling of the membrane, although in an approximated way. In the active state, the material is able to transmit only tensile stresses; vice versa, in the passive state it is stress-free and can contract freely. Equilibrium of the membrane in the current inflated configuration is enforced by recourse to the minimum total potential energy principle, whereas the Lagrange multipliers method is used to solve the minimum problem by accounting for the aforesaid nonlinear constitutive law. We use an expressly developed iterative-incremental numerical algorithm, consistent with the established governing set of equations, for accurately monitoring the evolution of the stress field in the membrane during the inflation process. Specifically, we suppose that the membrane reaches its final shape at the end of a four-stage loading process corresponding to the temporary enforcement and the subsequent removal of a fictitious antagonist plane traction acting uniformly along its entire boundary. By this way it is possible to solve with great accuracy the set of governing equilibrium equations by means of a numerical procedure in which the membrane’s tangent stiffness is always kept different from zero. The soundness of the proposed algorithm is verified by comparing the results with well-known solutions available in the literature. In particular, for each specific value of pressure, the current configuration of the inflated membrane found by assuming that compressions are allowed is compared in details to the corresponding pseudo-deformed surface, obtained by assuming a tension-only response.