Elastic membranes in confinement

An elastic membrane stretched between two walls takes a shape defined by its length and the volume of fluid it encloses. Many biological structures, such as cells, mitochondria and DNA, have finer internal structure in which a membrane (or elastic member) is geometrically ``confined'' by another object. We study the shape stability of elastic membranes in a ``confining'' box and introduce repulsive van der Waals forces to prevent the membrane from intersecting the wall. We aim to define the parameter space associated with mitochondria-like deformations. We compare the confined to `unconfined' solutions and show how the structure and stability of the membrane shapes changes with the system parameters.