Tensile wrinkling and creasing of an elastic half-space under a suction load

A famous and thoroughly investigated instability set-up, susceptible to wrinkling and creasing, consists of an elastic half-space being prestressed under a dead load, applied at infinity and, possibly, on its surface. We consider the case of a pressure or a suction applied on the surface and show that wrinkling and creasing occur in a surprising way, completely different from dead load. With reference to incompressible neo-Hookean elasticity and assuming the prevalence of a uniaxial prestress state induced by the application of a uniform pressure, no wrinkling or creasing is foreseen, whereas – unexpectedly – they do when reversing the sign of pressure, which is then a suction, thus leading to tensile creasing and tensile wrinkling. When a biaxial prestress state is considered, it is shown that some loading paths can be envisaged, able to grow to infinity without causing any instability. Consequently, we suggest that, according to its sign, pressure can promote or delay surface instabilities, a finding which may have implications for mechanobiology or microfluidic fluid–structure interaction.