Wrinkling of plates coupled with soft elastic media

If a rigid plate is subjected to stress and attached to a soft elastic medium, it is very likely that this stress is relieved by wrinkling: The plate buckles into a large number of waves. First the basic equation for wrinkling is rederived. Then the more complicated case of isotropic wrinkling is discussed, i.e., wrinkling resulting from isotropic compression of the plate. Wrinkles with different directions coexist while creating defects. A simple model describing the order in the direction of the wrinkles is presented in this paper. Near an edge the order is anomalously large. The measurements done by Bowden and coworkers (Appl. Phys. Lett. 75 (1999) 2558) on order near an edge are explained quantitatively by this model.