Effect of corner tensile forces with different patterns on wrinkling behavior of rectangular thin membranes

In this article, the wrinkling behavior of a rectangular thin membrane subjected to corner loads is predicted by taking into account the influence of corner force amplitude and inclination angle. Various loading patterns are investigated, including biaxial and uniaxial XX-/YY-axis symmetric loading, as well as randomly generated unsymmetric loading. In the first step of the nonlinear static simulation, the membrane is pre-tensioned to a certain level to artificially stabilize the membrane structure, thereby improving the numerical convergence during the simulation. To solve the original pre-tension-free problem, a modified version of Iterative Membrane Properties (IMP) method is proposed. This method incorporates wrinkling behavior into the nonlinear finite element simulation and successfully detects the correct wrinkled and slack regions in the membrane. The obtained results demonstrate that the force inclination angle has a significant impact on the wrinkling behavior of the rectangular membrane under corner forces. In particular, for a rectangular thin membrane with an aspect ratio of 2:1 under biaxial symmetric loading, the size of the wrinkled area reaches its minimum when the force inclination angle is approximately (Formula presented.).