Buckling is traditionally considered a phenomenon to avoid since it leads to the failure of a structure. A more recent idea, instead, suggests that instabilities can be used to design elastic structures that possess novel functions.

By combining theoretical analysis and finite element simulations, this talk addresses the near threshold and the far from threshold behaviours in two interesting cases: the pointwise indentation of pressurized elastic shells and the stretching of soft elastic cylinders with superficial tension.

In the former case, it will be shown how the spatial variation of the emerging wrinkling pattern depends on the pressurization and the applied indentation; in the latter, how the competition between bulk and superficial energies leads to the counterintuitive result that stretching favours the emergence of a beading instability.