We study the adhesion of an elastic sheet on a rigid spherical substrate. Gauss'Theorema Egregium shows that this operation necessarily generates metric distortions (i.e. stretching) as well as bending. As a result, a large variety of contact patterns ranging from simple disks to complex branched shapes are observed as a function of both geometrical and material properties. We describe these different morphologies as a function of two non-dimensional parameters comparing respectively bending and stretching energies to adhesion. A complete configuration diagram is finally proposed.
@article{arxiv.1103.4926,
title = {Wrapping an adhesive sphere with a sheet},
author = {J. Hure and B. Roman and J. Bico},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.4926},
year = {2015}
}