Related papers: Critical slowing down in purely elastic `snap-thro…

Counter-streaming systems are a canonical model for beam-plasma instabilities, such as the filamentation instability, which is critical in high energy density physics. However, scenarios involving intersecting fast electron beams break the…

Slow dynamic nonlinearity describes a poorly understood, creep-like phenomena that occurs in brittle composite materials such as rocks and cement. It is characterized by a drop in stiffness induced by a mechanical conditioning, followed by…

The sorption-desorption hysteresis observed in many nanoporous solids, at vapor pressures low enough for the the liquid (capillary) phase of the adsorbate to be absent, has long been vaguely attributed to changes in the nanopore structure,…

Using a flapping robot in a wind tunnel, we show that flapping faster amplifies existing longitudinal static stability (focusing on the pitch stiffness) and can even make an unstable flier stable. We show that stability for a flapper is not…

In bistable actuators and other engineered devices, a homogeneous stimulus (e.g. mechanical, chemical, thermal, or magnetic) is often applied to an entire shell to initiate a snap-through instability. In this work, we demonstrate that…

Flapping-wing insects, birds, and robots are thought to offset the high power cost of oscillatory wing motion by using elastic elements for energy storage and return. Insects possess highly resilient elastic regions in their flight anatomy…

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) does not only serve as the textbook model for a carnivorous plant, but also has long intrigued both botanists and engineers with its rapidly closing leaf trap. The trap closure is triggered by two…

In quasi-two-dimensional experiments with photoelastic particles confined to an annular region, an intruder constrained to move in a circular path halfway between the annular walls experiences stick-slip dynamics. We discuss the response of…

Many natural and technological systems fail to adapt to changing external conditions and move to a different state if the conditions vary too fast. Such "non-adiabatic" processes are ubiquitous, but little understood. We identify these…

Insects excel in trajectory and attitude handling during flight, yet the specific kinematic behaviours they use for maintaining stability in air disturbances are not fully understood. This study investigates the adaptive strategies of…

Flight is a complicated task at small scales in part due to the ubiquitous unsteady air which contains it. Flying organisms deal with these difficulties using active and passive control mechanisms to steer their body motion. Body attitudes…

The aim of this work is to study the dynamics and stability of soft shape-morphing configurations and specifically the modes of interaction between the front and rear airfoil segments. Initially we present several steady-state solutions,…

Non-conservative loads of the follower type are usually believed to be the source of dynamic instabilities such as flutter and divergence. It is shown that these instabilities (including Hopf bifurcation, flutter, divergence, and…

We discuss the stick-slip motion of an elastic block sliding along a rigid substrate. We argue that for a given external shear stress this system shows a discontinuous nonequilibrium transition from a uniform stick state to uniform sliding…

The use of critical slowing down as an early warning indicator for regime switching in observations from stochastic environments and noisy dynamical models has been widely studied and implemented in recent years. Some systems, however, have…

When a pair of parallel buckling beams of unequal width make lateral contact under increasing compression, eventually either the thin or the thick beam will snap, leading to collective motion of the beam pair. Using experiments and FEM…

We identify a new universality class of phase transitions that arises in non-normal systems, challenging the classical view that transitions require eigenvalue instabilities. In traditional bifurcation theory, critical phenomena emerge when…

We study a recently introduced ladder model which undergoes a transition between an active and an infinitely degenerate absorbing phase. In some cases the critical behaviour of the model is the same as that of the branching annihilating…

Granular materials such as sand, powders, and grains are omnipresent in daily life, industrial applications, and earth-science [1]. When unperturbed, they form stable structures that resemble the ones of other amorphous solids like metallic…

We study the aerodynamic response of a pre-stressed curved aileron. Whilst the fluid flow is standard (high Reynolds air flow undisturbed at infinity), the structure is designed to have a peculiar nonlinear behavior. Specifically, the…