  I study numerically the problem of delamination of a thin film elastically
attached to a rigid substrate. A nominally flat elastic thin film is modeled
using a two-dimensional triangular mesh. Both compression and bending
rigidities are included to simulate compression and bending of the film. The
film can buckle (i.e., abandon its flat configuration) when enough compressive
strain is applied. The possible buckled configurations of a piece of film with
stripe geometry are investigated as a function of the compressive strain. It is
found that the stable configuration depends strongly on the applied strain and
the Poisson ratio of the film. Next, the film is considered to be attached to a
rigid substrate by springs that can break when the detaching force exceeds a
threshold value, producing the partial delamination of the film. Delamination
is induced by a mismatch of the relaxed configurations of film and substrate.
The morphology of the delaminated film can be followed and compared with
available experimental results as a function of model parameters.
`Telephone-cord', polygonal, and `brain-like' patterns qualitatively similar to
experimentally observed configurations are obtained in different parameter
regions. The main control parameters that select the different patterns are the
mismatch between film and substrate and the degree of in-plane relaxation
within the unbuckled regions.
