Buckling of a thin, viscous film in an axisymmetric geometry

• Author / Creator

  Bhattacharya, Sanjay

• An experimental study of the shear-induced buckling of a thin, viscous film in an axisymmetric geometry is presented. Rotating the inner boundary relative to a stationary outer one, generates large in-plane shear forces in the laterally constrained millimetric film, which leads to buckling of the viscous layer manifest as waves on the film surface. Regarding as independent variables the rotation rate, the gap width between the inner and outer boundaries and the film thickness and viscosity, the focus is on determining the number of waves excited plus their phase speed and amplitude by post-processing the experimental images in MATLAB. Experimental measurements of the number of waves excited, in the region between the onset of instability and the point of wave breaking, matches well with analogue predictions derived from an adaptation of the Foppl von Karman equation, which was originally developed to consider the wrinkling of an elastic membrane.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Viscous
  • Aximmetric
  • Shear
  • Buckling

• Graduation date

  Spring 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3WW99

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.