Surface instability of imperfectly bonded multi-layered curved films under van der Waals forces

Abstract

Abstract Using a linear stability analysis and the transfer matrix method, we investigate the surface instability of an imperfectly bonded multi-layered curved film interacting with a curved rigid contactor, another imperfectly bonded multi-layered curved film or an imperfectly bonded multi-layered simply-supported cylindrical shell in each case through the action of attractive van der Waals forces. The imperfect interface is modelled as a linear spring layer with vanishing thickness characterized by normal and tangential imperfect interface parameters. Detailed numerical results are presented to demonstrate the resulting analytical solutions.