Buckling of a pre-compressed or pre-stretched membrane in shear flow

Membranes enclosing capsules and biological cells undergo periodic compression and stretching due to an imparted hydrodynamic traction as they rotate in a shear flow. Compression may cause transient or permanent buckling manifested by the onset of wrinkled shapes. To study the effect of pre-compression and pre-stretching on the critical conditions for buckling, the response of an elastic circular plate flush mounted on a plane wall and deforming under the action of a uniform tangential load due to an over-passing simple shear flow is considered. Working under the auspices of the theory of elastic instability of plates governed by the linear von Kármán equation, an eigenvalue problem is formulated resulting in a fourth-order partial differential equation with position-dependent coefficients parametrized by the Poisson ratio. Solutions are computed by applying Fourier series expansions to derive an infinite system of coupled ordinary differential equations, and then implementing orthogonal collocation. The solution space is illustrated, critical values for buckling are identified, the associated eigenfunctions representing possible modes of deformation are displayed, and the effect of the Poisson ratio is discussed. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.