Abstract
The gossamer structures have high specific strength and extensibility. Membranes, one of the members of them, have good characteristics but easily make wrinkles by compressive force. Wrinkling is one of the critical factors that degrade the performance of membrane structures. This paper proposes the way to detect the size and the position of wrinkles by observing reflection of the elastic waves at the boundary between the wrinkled section and the flat section. A wrinkle is modeled as a part of annulus, and reflection rates of elastic waves are investigated. We also studied the effects of thickness, material properties and curvature on the suitable wave frequency for detection of wrinkles.
