ABSTRACT
Thin membranes have very small and, in general, negligible flexural stiffness and can be idealized as no-compression materials. Compressive stress are handled via changes in membrane geometry called wrinkling . Analysis of wrinkling is important predicting the structural response of membranes. Applications of thin structures that can be modeled as membranes vary widely (see, e.g., a survey by Jenkins [194]), including the structures in the fields of civil engineering and architecture (e.g., prestressed membrane roof of a dome structure [15, 232, 398, 450]), aeronautics (e.g., light aircraft [27]), mechanical engineering (e.g., diaphragm valves or cloth draping [82]), and biomechanics (e.g., skin [102, 302] or blood vessels [185]).
