Pattern instability of functionally graded and layered elastic films under van der Waals forces

This paper investigates surface instability of a functionally graded and layered elastic film interacting with another flat rigid body [or interacting with another functionally graded and layered elastic film (or simply-supported elastic plate)] through surface van der Waals forces under plane strain conditions. The shear modulus in each functionally graded layer is assumed to be exponentially varied in the thickness direction. A homogeneous elastic layer, which is the focus of this research, can be considered as a special case of the functionally graded layer by taking the magnitude of the gradient parameter to be very small. The solution for any functionally graded layer is obtained in terms of the pseudo-Stroh formalism; then the solution for the multilayered system is derived based on the transfer-matrix method. As a result the displacement and traction vectors at the top surface of the layered film (or plate) can be expressed in terms of those at the bottom surface of the layered film (or plate). We can thus obtain simple relationships between the surface normal traction and surface deflection. Expressions for the interaction coefficient as a function of the wave number of the instability mode are therefore obtained. The critical value of the interaction coefficient for surface instability and the associated instability mode can be determined easily by identifying the minimum of the interaction coefficient. An advantage of the present method lies in that it is very convenient to address a film (or a plate) with an arbitrary number of layers. The correctness of the present approach is verified by comparison with known results. The results show that it is possible to find N distinct surface instability modes for an N-layered elastic film interacting with another flat rigid body; and that it is also possible to find that there are at most N1+N2 distinct surface instability modes for an N1-layered elastic film interacting with another N2-layered elastic film. When a multilayered elastic film interacts with a simply-supported multilayered elastic plate, the film-plate system will exhibit the instability mode of the film or that of the plate depending on the stability strength of the plate versus that of the film.