Rastko Sknepnek

University of Dundee University of Dundee


Wrinkle patterns in active viscoelastic thin sheets


Fluids and Materials Seminar


20th February 2020, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Fry Building, LG22


We show that a viscoelastic thin sheet driven out of equilibrium by active structural
remodelling develops a rich variety of shapes as a result of a competition between viscous relaxation
and activity. In the regime where active processes are faster than viscoelastic relaxation, wrinkles
that are formed due to remodelling are unable to relax to a configuration that minimises the elastic
energy and the sheet is inherently out of equilibrium. We argue that this non-equilibrium regime is
of particular interest in biology as it allows the system to access morphologies that are unavailable if
restricted to the adiabatic evolution between configurations that minimise the elastic energy alone.
Here, we introduce activity using the formalism of an evolving target metric and showcase the diversity
of wrinkling morphologies arising from out of equilibrium dynamics.






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