Why exactly do skin and other layered materials form a pattern such as wrinkle, crease, fold and delaminated buckle from time to time? A team of MIT researchers led by CEE Associate Professor Xuanhe Zhao ventured to isolate the underlying mechanism for these phenomenons. In a paper in Scientific Reports, Zhao devises a unified model that identifies how the properties of individual layers of materials, and the manner in which they are bonded to each other, to determine the exact form of the texture. “We propose a systematic approach,” Zhao said. “The model can quantitatively predict which state a surface will fold into, so you can design the pattern you want.” Read the MIT News article.