Pressure-driven wrinkling of soft inner-lined tubes

TL;DR

This paper models the wrinkling behavior of an elastic lining inside a tube under pressure, revealing how wrinkles form, evolve, and localize, with implications for understanding arterial wall mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces a simple equation capturing the elastic and pressure effects on wrinkling, validated by numerical continuation and weakly nonlinear theory.

Findings

Wavelength and amplitude of wrinkles depend on system parameters

Localized folds and mixed-mode states emerge in secondary bifurcations

Model aligns well with experimental observations of arterial endothelium

Abstract

Wrinkling of an inextensible elastic lining of an inner-lined tube under imposed pressure is considered. A simple equation modeling the elastic properties of the lining, the pressure, and the soft-substrate forces is derived. This equation aims to capture the wrinkling response of arterial endothelium to blood pressure changes. Numerical continuation is used to construct a bifurcation diagram as a function of the imposed pressure for in-plane deformations, in excellent agreement with weakly nonlinear theory, which we also develop. Our approach explains how the wavelength and amplitude of the wrinkles are selected as a function of the parameters in compressed wrinkling systems and shows how localized folds and mixed-mode states form in secondary bifurcations from wrinkled states.