Matched asymptotic solution for crease nucleation in soft solids

A soft solid subjected to a large compression develops sharp self-contacting folds at its free surface, known as creases. Creasing is physically different from structural elastic instabilities, like buckling or wrinkling. Indeed, it is a fully nonlinear material instability, similar to a phase-transformation. This work provides theoretical insights of the physics behind crease nucleation. Creasing is proved to occur after a global bifurcation allowing the co-existence of an outer deformation and an inner solution with localised self-contact at the free surface. The most fundamental result here is the analytic prediction of the nucleation threshold, in excellent agreement with experiments and numerical simulations. A matched asymptotic solution is given within the intermediate region between the two co-existing states. The self-contact acts like the point-wise disturbance in the Oseen’s correction for the Stokes flow past a circle. Analytic expressions of the matching solution and its range of validity are also derived.