A few typical delamination patterns of compressed thin films

In this paper we consider compressed flat thin films on rigid substrates. Residual compressive stresses arising e.g. from temperature loading are the driving quantities of the irreversible delamination process. A Reissner–Mindlin shell formulation is used as a model for the thin film, since small geometrical imperfections are considered to initiate buckling. For the interface we postulate the existence of a cohesive free energy as a function of the opening displacement vector and internal variables. The irreversible delamination process is described using a cohesive law of exponential type, where the parameters depend on the combination of the modes I, II and III. In order to analyse the delamination process exactly we use the energy criterion of the steady‐state growth. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)