Elastic-sheet tension ($T$)

The in-plane tensile force per unit transverse length in a thin elastic sheet produces the linear transverse restoring force $T{\eta }_{xx}$ per unit area. A spatially uniform displacement has zero curvature and hence no elastic-sheet tension force. This explains why infinite elastic-sheet tension blocks fixed nonzero-wavenumber acoustic membrane waves but does not make the uniform mode rigid. The sheet's inertia, by contrast, acts also on uniform oscillations.