Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791

www.elsevier.com/locate/nel
Finite element analysis of wrinkling membrane structures with
large deformations
Eung-Shik Lee
a
, Sung-Kie Youn
b,
a
KOMPSAT-3 Program Ofce, Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), Republic of Korea
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology 373-1, Gusung-Dong, Yusung-Gu, Daejon, Republic of Korea
Received 1 December 2004; received in revised form 2 January 2006; accepted 8 January 2006
Available online 21 February 2006
Abstract
Membrane wrinkling problems are formulated using the geometrically nonlinear nite element method with convected coordinates.
A membrane structure which is initially in an under-constrained state cannot resist compressive stresses and experiences out-of-plane defor-
mation to avoid occurrence of compressive stresses. When a membrane is in the state of wrinkling, it is crucial to determine the wrinkling
direction and the corresponding stress state for an analysis of the wrinkled membrane. Tensile strain energy is dened to correctly and sim-
ply evaluate the wrinkling directions based on the assumption that wrinkles are aligned to maximize tensile strain energy. This approach
requires neither extra parameter nor kinematic assumption to predict wrinkle orientation. A pseudo-dynamic method is also introduced to
initiate NewtonRaphson solution procedures for the analysis of under-constrained membranes. Several benchmark problems are analyzed to
demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed formulation, and a space inatable reector example is also presented.
2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Wrinkling; Membrane; Inatable; Under-constrained; Tensile energy
1. Introduction
Membrane structures are increasingly used in space and ter-
restrial applications and are easily observed in pneumatic struc-
tures on roofs and in air-bags, etc. Due to their light weight, high
strength-to-weight ratio and ease of stowing and deploying,
membranes are especially attractive for space applications. Ex-
amples include: inatable reectors, space-based radar, space-
based communication systems such as antennae and solar power
collection panels on spacecraft, etc. [1,2].
Mechanical models of membranes are usually assumed to
have zero exural stiffness and have no resistance to com-
pressive stress. When compressive stresses are about to oc-
cur in the membrane structure, the membrane tends to avoid
compressive stresses by out-of-plane deformation called wrin-
kling. This results in a directional relationship between stress
and strain because the membrane reacts to tensile stress with
usual membrane stiffness whereas it cannot resist compressive

Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 42 869 3034; fax: +82 42 869 3210.
E-mail address: skyoun@sorak.kaist.ac.kr (S.-K. Youn).
0168-874X/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.nel.2006.01.004
stresses. This means that in a wrinkled region, the stiffness of
the membrane perpendicular to the direction of the wrinkles
reduces to zero. Wrinkling which is in uni-axial tensile stress-
state has much inuence on the membrane structural response.
Thus, modeling of wrinkling phenomena is critical and com-
plicated in the numerical analysis of membrane structures. It
is of the utmost importance to be able to predict the behavior
of membrane wrinkles including in which direction they occur
and what stress they have. For a linear isotropic material deter-
mining wrinkling direction and wrinkle stresses is more or less
straightforward because principal stress and strain directions are
coincident [35]. However, for anisotropic cases, which only
a few studies [69] deal with, determining wrinkling direction
and corresponding stress state is still complicated.
A membrane can be categorized into three possible states:
slack, wrinkled and taut. There are three commonly used crite-
ria for judging the membrane state based on principal stresses,
principal strains and a combination of principal stresses and
strains. In a taut state, a membrane is experiencing biaxial ten-
sile stresses. In a slack state, a membrane is not stretched in any
direction. If a membrane is neither slack nor taut, it is in the
E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791 781
wrinkled state in which there is tensile stress in one direction
and zero stress in another direction.
The detailed conguration of the wrinkles depends on the
negligibly small, but not zero, bending stiffness of the mem-
brane [10]. A typical wrinkling analysis usually obtains the
results of deformations and strains in an average sense. This
type of analysis gives enough information such as stress,
strain and wrinkled regions to understand a membrane from
a structural point of view. In general, the detailed description
of each wrinkle is of less concern with respect to struc-
tural performances. The exact shape of the membrane after
wrinkling cannot be obtained using conventional membrane
theories.
In some studies, the stiffness matrix of a wrinkled membrane
is modied in order to meet the non-negative stress conditions
for wrinkled and slack regions. Miller and Hedgepeth [11] have
introduced the concept of a variable Poissons ratio with intu-
itive observation of membrane deformation and Akita et al. [12]
have constructed a modied stressstrain matrix. Ding andYang
[13] have extended this concept to create a viableYoungs mod-
ulus and Poissons ratio. Schur [14] and Liu et al. [15] have used
a penalty parameter to circumvent numerical problems due to
zero stiffness in the direction perpendicular to the tensile stress.
Pipkin and Steigman [3,4] put the tension eld theory on a ra-
tional basis introducing the relaxed strain energy density, from
which negative stresses are never derived. Jenkins and Leonard
[16] and Haseganu et al. [17] conducted numerical implemen-
tation of this relaxed energy density concept. However, they
only studied isotropic cases. Epstein [9] has applied a notion
of relaxed strain energy to the wrinkling of anisotropic elastic
membranes.
Another approach is based on the modication of the defor-
mation gradient tensor instead of changing the stiffness ma-
trix of a wrinkled membrane. Roddeman et al. [6] have intro-
duced a special parameter which represents the magnitude of
wrinkles and modies the deformation tensor. A modied de-
formation gradient tensor which has a wrinkle parameter and
unit vector of zero stress direction results in the correct stress
state of a membrane when substituted into constitutive equa-
tions. Jeong and Kwak [18] have formulated a wrinkling prob-
lem with complementarity condition between the wrinkle pa-
rameter and the principal stress. Lu et al. [8] have extended the
wrinkling theory of Roddeman et al. for curvilinear convected
coordinates. Kang and Im [7] have proposed a new scheme to
nd the wrinkling direction applicable for orthotropic material
based on kinematic relations.
In this work, large deformations of wrinkled membrane are
formulated with convected coordinates. To correctly and simply
obtain the wrinkling directions of orthotropic membranes, the
tensile strain energy is dened and the wrinkling direction is
determined based on the assumption that wrinkles are aligned
to maximize this tensile strain energy. For the numerical prob-
lem due to zero stiffness, the usual stiffness matrix is used in-
stead of the penalty parameter modication matrix. A pseudo-
dynamic method is also introduced to initiate NewtonRaphson
solution procedures for the analysis of under-constrained mem-
branes. In Section 2, the membrane theory and the formulation
of wrinkling is presented and discussed. The formulation of the
pseudo-dynamic method is described in Section 3. Several ex-
amples of membrane problems are analyzed and discussed in
Section 4. The main features of the formulation and results are
summarized in Section 5.
2. Formulation
2.1. Membrane theory
To describe large deformations of thin wrinkled membranes,
it is assumed that a pseudo-surface can be dened such that
it represents a global smooth surface of wrinkled membrane
removing wrinkles and the membrane exists in a three-
dimensional space with the surface in a plane stress state. The
pseudo-surface is dened by the surface convected coordinates
(0
1
, 0
2
) attached on the pseudo-surface. Tensor notation is used
and the Greek indices take 1 and 2 while the Latin indices take
1, 2 and 3. The summation convention is implied for repeated
indices unless otherwise indicated. Bold variables represent
vector or tensor quantities and plain variables represent their
components.
The large deformation of a membrane structure is consid-
ered to deform from the undeformed conguration,
0
, to the
deformed conguration,
t
as shown in Fig. 1. Let us consider
the deformation from position vector X to x referred to con-
guration on surface
0
,
t
, respectively. The covariant base
vectors of the surface
0
and
t
in convected coordinates are
dened, respectively, as follows:
G
:
=
jX
j0
:
, g
:
=
jx
j0
:
. (1)
The contravariant base vectors and covariant components of the
metric tensor and their reciprocals are dened, respectively, as
G
:
= G
:[
G
[
, g
:
= g
:[
g
[
, (2)
G
:[
= G
:
G
[
, g
:[
= g
:
g
[
, (3)
[G
:[
] = [G
:[
]
1
, [g
:[
] = [g
:[
]
1
. (4)
Base vectors normal to the tangent plane of the membrane are
obtained as
G
3
= G
3
=
G
1
G
2
|G
1
G
2
|
, g
3
= g
3
=
g
1
g
2
|g
1
g
2
|
. (5)
The deformation gradient tensor F which transforms the in-
nitesimal material vector dX at
0
into a vector dx at
t
is
given as
F = g
:
G
:
, dx = F dX, (6)
dX = G
:
d0
:
, dx = g
:
d0
:
. (7)
If displacement from the initial state
0
to the current deformed
state
t
is u = x X, then the covariant base vectors can be
written as
g
:
=
jx
j0
:
= G
:
+
ju
j0
:
. (8)
782 E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791
X
3
, x
3
X
2
, x
2
X
1
, x
1
X x
G
3
G
2
G
1
u
A
a
X
x
g
1
g
2
g
3
0
2
0
2
0
3
0
3
0
1 0
1
Fig. 1. Denition of conguration for membrane geometry of large deforma-
tion.
0
and
t
refer to the reference and deformed congurations, respec-
tively.
The GreenLagrangian strain tensor with reference congu-
ration
0
is expressed in convected coordinate as follows:
=c
:[
G
:
G
[
=
1
2
(F
T
FI)=
1
2
(g
:[
G
:[
)G
:
G
[
. (9)
Incremental GreenLagrangian strain from
t
to neighboring
conguration
t +t
is obtained as
= (
t +t
c
:[

t
c
:[
)G
:
G
[
=
1
2
(
t +t
g
:[

t
g
:[
)G
:
G
[
=
1
2

ju
j0
:
g
[
+
ju
j0
[
g
:
+
ju
j0
:

ju
j0
[

G
:
G
[
, (10)
where u represents incremental displacement between
t
and

t +t
. The incremental GreenLagrangian strain tensor c
:[
can be decomposed into linear and nonlinear strain tensors,
e
:[
, p
:[
, respectively, as follows:
c
:[
=e
:[
+p
:[
, (11)
e
:[
=
1
2

ju
j0
:
g
[
+
ju
j0
[
g
:

, (12)
p
:[
=
1
2
ju
j0
:

ju
j0
[
. (13)
The second PKstress, S
:[
is related to the GreenLagragian
strain tensor c
:[
by constitutive law. For generalized Hookes
material it is obtained as
S = S
:[
G
:
G
[
, (14)
S
:[
= C
:[o
c
o
, C = C
:[o
G
:
G
[
G

G
o
, (15)
where C is the elasticity tensor at the conguration
0
. The sec-
ond PK stress has the following relationship with the Cauchy
stress tensor:
S = JF
1
F
T
, (16)
where J is the Jacobian and is given by J = det(F).
2.2. Wrinkling criterion
For a given stress and strain state, the wrinkling criterion has
to correctly judge whether the state of the membrane is taut,
wrinkled or slack. There are three sets of criteria: the rst set
is based on principal stresses, the second set on the principal
strains and the last set on the principal stress and strain together.
It is known that criteria using principal stress and strain together
gives the most accurate description of a real membrane state
[7] and this may also be applied to anisotropic materials. This
criterion could be stated as [8]
(I) Taut state: The membrane is taut if stress is in tension in
any direction, i.e.
b S b0, b
:
b
[
S
:[
0, (17)
where b is an arbitrary non-zero vector tangent to
0
. This is
equivalent to the following condition:
S
11
+ S
22
0 and S
11
S
22
S
12
S
12
0. (18)
In this state, a conventional membrane theory can be applied
without any modication.
(II) Slack state: The membrane is slack if it is not stretched
in any direction, i.e.
b b0, b
:
b
[
c
:[
0, (19)
where b is an arbitrary non-zero vector tangent to
0
. This is
equivalent to the following condition:
c
11
+ c
22
0 and c
11
c
22
c
12
c
12
0. (20)
In the slack state, stress and strain vanish and the membrane
loses its stiffness naturally.
(III) Wrinkled state: A membrane is wrinkled if the mem-
brane is neither taut nor slack. Membrane is in a uniaxial ten-
sion state where only one principal stress is tensile and the
other vanishes. Let

C
:[o
be transformed elastic stiffness into
the wrinkled coordinate obtained by

C
:[o
= T
:
j
T
[
v
T

T
o
p
C
jvp
, (21)
where T is the tensor transformation matrix from material coor-
dinate to wrinkled coordinate. Elastic stiffness in the wrinkled
coordinate goes to zero except the component along wrinkled
direction.

C
1111
=

C
1111
, (22)

C
2222
=

C
1122
=

C
2212
=

C
1212
= 0. (23)
E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791 783
Second PK stresses also vanish except tensile stress in wrin-
kled direction.
2.3. Wrinkling orientation
If a membrane is judged wrinkled state based on the above-
mentioned wrinkling criterion, it is the determination of wrin-
kling orientation that is to be sought rst because it affects
the redistribution of membrane stresses accordingly. To date,
there are only a few schemes proposed for the determination
of wrinkle orientation which cover the anisotropic material.
Based on the observation that a wrinkled membrane undergoes
rigid body motion transverse to the wrinkles until the wrin-
kles vanish, Roddeman et al. [6] and Kang [7] have proposed
the schemes to nd wrinkle orientation. Roddeman et al. has
modied the deformation gradient tensor by introducing wrin-
kle parameter along with wrinkle direction. It requires a solu-
tion of coupled nonlinear equations of a wrinkle parameter and
orientation vector for general elastic material. Kang has incor-
porated this observation into invariance of strain components
without extra wrinkle parameter.
Let us consider the initially at membrane loaded only at
its boundaries and it is assumed that this membrane is in the
wrinkled state (uni-axial stress) over the entire region. Let the
line of uni-axial stress be tension rays. It is noted that the
strain energy is only dependent on the tensile stress along this
rays because there are no normal and shear stresses across this
tension rays. If the membrane is to be cut along these rays strain
energy cannot be affected even for the successive cuts. But,
cuts which do not coincide with this rays cause two apparent
changes. First, the strain energy comes only due to the stresses
along these lines. Second, the strain energy would be less than
in the uncut membrane because successive cuts could release
energy. This implies that distribution of tension rays maximizes
this tensile strain energy [19]. This observation can be used for
the calculation of wrinkle orientation of the membrane.
The tensile strain energy, W
t
([) along the direction [ can
be dened as
W
t
([) =
1
2
S
t
([) c
t
([), (24)
where t does not imply summation convention and S
t
([), c
t
([)
represent tensile stress and strain along direction [, respec-
tively. In wrinkled region where membrane is in uni-axial
stress state, the tensile stress, S
t
([) is the only non-zero com-
ponent. If the tensile strain energy W
t
([) is maximized at
[ = [
w
, then [
w
is the wrinkle orientation and S
t
([
w
) is the
tensile stress along the wrinkle direction.
Because

C
1111
is the only non-zero component of stiffness
matrix in a wrinkled state as explained in Eq. (22), the tensile
stress can be obtained as follows:
S
t
([) =

C
1111
([) c
t
([). (25)
If the above Eq. (25) incorporates into Eq. (24), the tensile
strain energy W
t
([) can be expressed as follows:
W
t
([) =
1
2

C
1111
([) {c
t
([)}
2
. (26)
Because the membrane along the wrinkle direction should be
in extension the strain in the wrinkle direction has to satisfy
c
t
([)0. Therefore, the problem of wrinkle orientation can be
dened as follows:
Find [ such that

Max. W
t
([)=
1
2

C
1111
([){c
t
([)}
2
,
s.t. c
t
([)0.
(27)
For the case of isotropic material in orthonormal convected co-
ordinate, stiffness along the wrinkle direction should beYoungs
modulus E which is independent of [. And the tensile strain
energy can be written as
W
t
([) =
1
2
E [c
t
([)]
2
. (28)
It is noted that maximum W
t
([) occurs when c
t
([) is maxi-
mum. This means the wrinkles occur along the maximum prin-
cipal strain direction (same as principal stress direction).
Using Mohrs circle, the range of solution [ that satises
c
t
([)0 can be found as
[
0
[
1
2[ [
0
+ [
1
, (29)
cos [
0
=
c
22
c
11
2R
E
, cos [
1
=
c
11
+ c
22
2R
E
,
sin [
0
=
c
12
R
E
, sin [
1
=

c
12
c
12
c
11
c
22
R
E
, (30)
R
E
=

c
11
c
22
2

2
+ c
12
c
12
, (31)
where [
0
represents principal strain axis and [
1
is the maxi-
mum angle measured from principal strain axis that strain lies
in positive value.
Because c
t
([) decreases symmetrically from maximum
value at principal axis, the tensile strain energy W
t
([) has the
maximum in the angle direction that

C
1111
([) increases. Be-
cause [ can be limited within the angle (/2, /2) without
a loss of generality, the wrinkling direction [ can be found in
the following ranges:
[
0
2
[ min

2
,
[
0
+ [
1
2

when

C
1111
([) increase at [
0
or
max

2
,
[
0
[
1
2

[
[
0
2
when

C
1111
([) decrease at [
0
. (32)
2.4. Finite element implementation
Applying the principle of virtual work, the total Lagrangian
equation for wrinkled membranes is given by

0
S
:[
oe
:[
d +

0
S
:[
op
:[
d
=
t +t
W

0
S
:[
oe
:[
d, (33)
784 E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791
Wrinkling procedure
Start
Calculate stress
Check wrinkling
criteria
Calculate wrinkling direction
Find [ such that
Form transformation and
inverse transformation components
Transform elastic coefficients from
material frame into principal frame
Modify elastic coefficients in
principal frame
Transform back to material
frame from principal frame
Update stress with modified elastic coefficient
Return
Return
Return
Fig. 2. The computational ow chart for wrinkling procedure.
where
t +t
W is the virtual work of external loads. S
:[
is
stress increment and can be obtained by
S
:[
= C
:[o
c
o
, (34)
where C
:[o
is a material stiffness matrix and is given by Eq.
(22) or by Eq. (23) for membranes in a wrinkled state. Because
some of the components of C
:[o
vanish in a wrinkled state,
the tangent stiffness of Eq. (33) could be singular. Although
Liu et al. [15] have used a penalty parameter to avoid a numer-
ical problem, another procedure is required to select it based
on the bending stiffness of the membrane. In this study, the
usual stiffness matrix of a membrane is used independently of
a wrinkle state.
Referring to Jeong et al. [8] and Lu [18], if an element natural
coordinate system is selected as a convected coordinate and it is
assumed that there exists a xed Cartesian coordinate system in
the Euclidean space, nite element implementation is more or
less straightforward for the non-wrinkled membrane. Wrinkling
procedure is implemented based on the formulation in Sections
2.2 and 2.3. Fig. 2 shows the ow chart of wrinkling procedure
for the formulation of a wrinkled membrane.
3. Pseudo-dynamic method
The membrane structure is in the under-constrained state at
the unstressed initial conguration because the stiffness of out-
of-plane comes only from in-plane stresses. NewtonRaphson
scheme based on the stiffness matrix may not start solution
iteration without assuming initial stress or initial displace-
ment. However, depending on the applied initial stress, the
NewtonRaphson method may not converge to the solution
or may require more iterations. To solve these problems with
NewtonRaphson method, self-starting schemes are searched
without assuming initial stress. The pseudo-dynamic method,
in which the static equilibrium state is regarded as the long
time limit of the damped dynamical system, is introduced in
E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791 785
this study. Because the pseudo-dynamic method is used only
for self-starting, NewtonRaphson iterations are used after a
rough approximate solution is found. Since the transient solu-
tion is not concerned, articial mass and a damping coefcient
which do not represent the real physical system are chosen to
accelerate the decay of transient response [2022]. For those
problems with high nonlinearity and instability, it is preferred
to adaptively update the time integration parameters so as to
produce the most rapid convergence. Although, in general,
a very small time step is required to ensure the numerical
stability, the computational cost per each step is very low [22].
Let us consider the following dynamic system for the nth
time step:
M x
n
+ cM x
n
+ F(x
n
) = P
n
, (35)
where F is the internal force containing the nonlinear effects,
and P is the external force. With the central difference method,
the approximations for the temporal derivatives are given by
x
n+(1/2)
=
x
n+1
x
n1
h
, (36)
x
n
=
x
n+(1/2)
x
n(1/2)
h
, (37)
where h is a time increment. Substituting Eqs. (36) and (37)
into Eq. (35) and rearranging terms yields the following time
marching equations as follows:
x
n+(1/2)
=

2ch
2+ch

x
n(1/2)
+
2h
2+ch
M
1
(P
n
F
n
), (38)
x
n+1
= x
n
+ h x
n+(1/2)
. (39)
It is known that the optimal convergence is obtained under the
following conditions [21]:
h
2

m
, (40)
c 2
0
, (41)
where
m
,
0
are, respectively, the minimum and maximum
frequencies of the system equation (35). Because these fre-
quencies are generally not known prior to analysis, effective
techniques for their estimation must be established. If the time
step size is held constant and Gerschgorins theorem is used
together with Eq. (40), the diagonal entries of the mass matrix
can be obtained as follows [22]:
M
ii

h
2
4

j
|K
ij
|, (42)
where K
ij
is an element of the global tangent stiffness ma-
trix. If x
n(1/2)
is selected a weighting vector, an estimate of
the minimum frequency may be obtained from the following
Rayleigh quotient:

2
0

( x
n(1/2)
)
T

S
n
x
n(1/2)
( x
n(1/2)
)
T
M x
n(1/2)
, (43)
where

S
n
ii
represent the diagonal estimate of the stiffness and
are given by

S
n
ii
=
F
n
i
F
n1
i
h x
i
n(1/2)
. (44)
For the case that the minimum frequency may become nega-
tive, the damping coefcient c is set to zero. After the pseudo-
dynamic method nds the rough approximation to the solution,
it switches to the NewtonRaphson method. Since the transient
solution is not concerned, optimal mass and a damping coef-
cient are adaptively chosen to accelerate decay of the transient
solution.
4. Numerical examples
4.1. Torsion of a membrane in a circular disk
As a rst example, torsion of a circular membrane attached
to a rigid disk at the inner edge and to a guard ring at the outer
edge has been chosen [6]. The inner diameter of the membrane
is 1 m and the outer diameter is 2.5 m. The thickness of the
membrane is assumed to be 1 mm. A material is assumed linear
elastic as follows:
E
1
= 1.0 10
5
Pa, E
2
= f E
1
, v
12
= 0.3,
G
12
= 0.385 10
5
Pa, v
12
E
2
= v
21
E
1
.
f is the parameter which determines the orthotropy of the mem-
brane. If f = 1, the membrane is isotropic material. The rigid
disk on the inner edge is rotated by 10

. The nite elements

and initial conguration are shown in Fig. 3. Turning the rigid
disk causes wrinkling in the membrane. Fig. 4 shows princi-
pal stresses on the deformed shape of the isotropic material.
Because only one principal stress in each element shows up
Fig. 3. Finite element model and boundary condition of torsion of a disk
membrane.
786 E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791
Fig. 4. Deformed shape shown with principal stresses and imaginary wrinkle
lines of an isotropic membrane disk.
Fig. 5. Deformed shape shown with principal stresses for an orthotropic disk.
Anisotropy in xy directions E
y
/E
x
= 10).
and the perpendicular stress disappears, the membrane is in a
state of wrinkling over the whole region. Solid lines are the
streamlines of principal stresses, which imply the wrinkles on
deformed conguration.
Two orthotropic cases of f = 10 are considered. One is or-
thotropic in x and y directions (E
y
/E
x
= 10). Another is or-
thotropic in a radial and circumferential direction (E
0
/E
r
=10).
In the xy orthotropic membrane shown in Fig. 5, wrinkling
occurs mostly in the upper-right and the lower-left part of the
membrane where minimumprincipal stresses are zero and max-
imum principal stresses are also very small. These gures agree
well with previously published results [68]. The wrinkled zone
Fig. 6. Deformed shape shown with principal stresses for an orthotropic disk.
Anisotropy in radial and circumferential directions (E
0
/E
r
= 10).
is shown in Fig. 7(d). Fig. 6 shows the principal stresses on
the deformed shape for radial and circumferential orthotropy.
As expected, this result is rotationally symmetric. The inner-
most three layers of elements are wrinkled and outermost three
layers are in a taut state with maximum principal stresses in
the circumferential direction. Fig. 7 shows the wrinkled zone
variation as the orthotropic ratio f changes.
4.2. Ination of a square airbag
An inated square airbag is modeled and analyzed as shown
in Fig. 8. The linear isotropic material behavior is assumed as
follows: E =588 MPa, v =0.4 and t =0.06 mm. To model the
upper part of the airbag which consists of two joined square
plane membranes, the edge is represented by the sliding con-
dition in the plane. A uniform pressure of magnitude 5 kPa
is applied inside the airbag. The results are compared with
those performed by Contri et al. [5] and Ziegler et al. [24].
Table 1 shows that stress and displacement for selected points
agree well with published results.
Fig. 9(a) and (b) show the inated shapes with and without
wrinkling procedures. As shown in Fig. 9(b), elements with bi-
axial lines which represent principal stresses are in a taut state,
and elements with one line are wrinkled. Fig. 10 shows the side
views of an inated membrane with and without wrinkling pro-
cedures. The deformed shape with wrinkling procedure looks
very smooth, but it shows sharp slope change without wrinkling
procedure [23]. The inated shapes for the two cases are very
different and stresses along the centerline in Fig. 11 are also
very different. Stresses with a wrinkling procedure are always
non-negative, but stresses without wrinkling procedure can have
negative values and can oscillate rapidly. The membrane theory
gives unstable solutions without taking into account wrinkling
phenomena because it does not satisfy the stability condition of
E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791 787
Fig. 7. Wrinkled zone variation with orthotropic ratio change: (a) E
y
/E
x
= 1, (b) E
y
/E
x
= 3, (c) E
y
/E
x
= 5 and (d) E
y
/E
x
= 10.

AC = 1.2m

E = 588MPa
= 0.4
thickness t = 0.06mm
A
B
C
M
Fig. 8. Finite element model of a square airbag for ination.
a boundary value problem [17]. The inated shape in Fig. 9(a)
can be varied with nite elements and the iterative solution
method.
Because the airbag is in an unstressed initial state and it
has zero exural stiffness it is under-constrained for the out-
of-plane degrees of freedom. In the case that initial stresses
are applied in order to give articial stiffness, the convergence
depends on the initial stresses as shown in Fig. 12. If the applied
initial stress is larger than 10 MPa or less than 1.E 5 MPa,
the NewtonRaphson method can hardly provide convergent
solutions. It is noted that minimum iterations are necessary
for 1 MPa initial stresses that are very close to the equilibrium
stresses as we can see in Fig. 11. As expected, the closer the
applied stress is to the equilibrium stress, the fewer the number
of iterations are required to converge. However, if the pseudo-
dynamic method is applied at the beginning and then switched
to the NewtonRaphson method, the solution can be obtained
without reference to the initial stresses.
4.3. Inatable reector
The precision inatable reector is a typical example of
a large lightweight space antenna concept. It requires some
788 E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791
Table 1
Comparison of displacement M, B and stress o
M
of a square inatable airbag
Present result Ziegler et al. [24] Contri et al. [5]
400 element 400 element 100 element
U
M
(cm) 21.4 21.6 21.7
U
B
(cm) 11.8 12.3 11.0
o
M
(MPa) 3.8 3.7 3.5
Fig. 9. Ination of a square airbag with and without wrinkling procedure: (a)
deformed shape without wrinkling procedure and (b) deformed shape shown
with principal stress directions with wrinkling procedure.
level of surface shape accuracy with little deviation from
the predened desired shape [1]. To evaluate the effects
of parameters such as pressure, material anisotropy, etc., a
Fig. 10. Comparison of an inated square airbag with and without the
wrinkling procedure: (a) calculated shape without wrinkling procedure and
(b) deformed shape with wrinkling procedure.
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
S
t
r
e
s
s
(
M
P
a
)
Distance along centerline

X
with wrinkling

y
with wrinkling

X
w/o wrinkling

y
w/o wrinkling




Fig. 11. Variation of stresses along the center line of a square airbag with
and without the wrinkling procedure.
reector with an inatable torus attached on its edge is se-
lected (Fig. 13). The reector and torus are inated by the
pressure, P
r
= 100 Pa, P
t
= 50 kPa, respectively. The radius
of the reector is 1 m and the width of the torus is 100 mm
in at conguration. The torus is made of isotropic material
with the properties: E =10.0 GPa, v =0.3. The reector is as-
sumed circumferentially orthotropic with orthotropic ratio f as
follows:
E
r
= 1.0 GPa, E
0
= f E
r
, v
12
= 0.3, G
12
= 385 MPa.
E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791 789
1E-5 1E-4 1E-3 0.01 0.1 1 10 100
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
N
u
m
b
e
r

o
f

i
t
e
r
a
t
i
o
n
Initial Stress(MPa)
Initial stress
Pseudo-dynamic
Fig. 12. The number of iterations depends on the assumed initial stress for
an under-constrained square airbag. The pseudo-dynamic method initiates
NewtonRaphson procedure without referring to the initial stress.
Fig. 13. Schematics of an initially at inatable reector (radius
a = 1.0 m, P
r
, P
t
: pressure of reector and torus, respectively).
Because pressurization makes the boundary move radially
inward, compressive stress tends to occur in the circumferen-
tial direction in an outer annulus of the reector, which results
in wrinkling in a radial direction. Fig. 14 shows principal
stresses for f =1, 10 cases. For isotropic material, radial stress
is maximum principal stress over the whole region. However,
maximum principal stress changes from circumferential stress
in the central area to radial stress in the outer annulus area for
an orthotropic membrane. The two outer layers of elements of
the isotropic reector are in a wrinkled state whereas the three
Fig. 14. Principal stresses of inatable reector. For isotropic material, radial
stress is always the maximum principal but the maximum principal stresses
change from a circumferential direction in the central area to a radial di-
rection in the outer annulus for orthotropic material: (a) isotropic membrane
(E
0
/E
r
= 1) and (b) Orthotropic membrane (E
0
/E
r
= 10).
outer layers are in wrinkled state for f = 10 reector. Fig. 15
shows that as the orthotropic ratio, f, decreases, the wrinkled
area also decreases. And, as f goes to zero, the membrane
seems to be free from wrinkling. Deformed proles of the
inated reector are shown in Fig. 16 with various orthotropic
ratios. Fig. 17 shows the difference between the calculated
surface and ideal parabolic surface, which coincides with
the calculated surface at the vertex and the edge. It is noted
that the deviation becomes smaller as the orthotropic ratio
increases.
790 E. Lee, S.-K. Youn / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 42 (2006) 780791
0 1 2 3 4 5
20
30
40
50
W
r
i
n
k
l
e
d

A
r
e
a
(
%
)
Orthotropic Ratio(E
0
/E
r
)
Fig. 15. The wrinkled area changes with the orthotropic ratio of the inatable
reector.
0 200 400 600 800
1000
0
50
100
150
200
250
D
e
f
l
e
c
t
i
o
n
Radius (a)
E
0
/E
r
=0.01
E
0
/E
r
=0.2
E
0
/E
r
=0.5
E
0
/E
r
=1
E
0
/E
r
=3
E
0
/E
r
=5
Fig. 16. Deformed proles of an inatable reector with varying orthotropic
ratios (reector part shown).
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
D
e
v
i
a
t
i
o
n

f
r
o
m

p
a
r
a
b
o
l
a
(
m
m
)
Radius(r/a)
E

/ E
r
=0.01
E

/ E
r
=0.2
E

/ E
r
=0.5
E

/ E
r
=5
E

/ E
r
=3
E

/ E
r
=1
Fig. 17. Differences between the calculated surface and the ideal surface of
inatable reector with various orthotropic ratios.
5. Conclusions
Large deformations of a wrinkled membrane are analyzed in
convected coordinates with proposed schemes for determining
wrinkle orientation. With a tensile strain energy concept, wrin-
kling orientation is determined based on the assumption that
wrinkles are aligned to maximize this tensile strain energy. This
scheme nds the direction of maximum tensile energy over the
range of a positive strain and updates the stresses taking into
account the wrinkling direction. This requires neither extra pa-
rameters nor a kinematic assumption to predict wrinkle orien-
tation. Some examples show that results agree well with previ-
ously published results. It is also shown that the introduction of
the pseudo-dynamic method allows the NewtonRaphson pro-
cedure to produce stable solutions without requiring an appli-
cation of initial stresses. Formulations of this paper are applied
to a precision inatable reector and the effects of material
anisotropy on the surface quality are evaluated.
For a given nal surface shape and accuracy of the precision
reector, it is usually required to determine the initial shape,
thickness, pressure, etc. To facilitate this design process that is
thought of as a kind of inverse problem, a more systematic way
is necessary. With the successful analysis of the rather intuitive
determination of wrinkle orientation it is also necessary to fur-
ther derive more theoretical basis for this tensile strain energy.
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