Wrinkling of Tympanic Membrane Under Unbalanced Pressure

Abstract

Mechanics of tympanic membrane (TM) is crucial for investigating the acoustic transmission through the ear. In this study, we studied the wrinkling behavior of tympanic membrane when it is exposed to mismatched air pressure between the ambient and the middle ear. The Rayleigh-Ritz method is adopted to analyze the critical wrinkling pressure and the fundamental eigenmode. An approximate analytical solution is obtained and validated by finite element analysis (FEA). The model will be useful in future investigations on how the wrinkling deformation of the TM alters the acoustic transmission function of the ear.

Controllable Propagation of Bending Waves in Wrinkled Films

“…Thin-film structures are ubiquitous in nature and engineering [1][2][3], and their mechanical behaviors have received considerable attention, owing to the application of these structures in flexible electronics [4,5], material science [6,7], bioengineering [8,9], and aerospace engineering [2,10]. Wrinkling in a thin film is energetically favorable due to the negligible stiffness of the film experiencing compressive stresses [11][12][13][14][15]. Wrinkles usually change the structural geometry and lead to deviations in the corresponding mechanical behavior.…”