Related papers: Hanging cables and spider threads
Cables under very low tension may become highly contorted and form loops, tangles, knots and kinks. These nonlinear deformations, which are dominated by flexure and torsion, pose serious concerns for cable deployment. Simulation of the…
The effects of line tension on the morphology of a sessile droplet placed on top of a convex spherical substrate are studied. The morphology of the droplet is determined from the global minimum of the Helmholtz free energy. The contact…
The square lattice with central forces between nearest neighbors is isostatic with a subextensive number of floppy modes. It can be made rigid by the random addition of next-nearest neighbor bonds. This constitutes a rigidity percolation…
The protein folding problem must ultimately be solved on all length scales from the atomic up through a hierarchy of complicated structures. By analyzing the stability of the folding process using physics and mathematics, this paper shows…
Optimal geometrical arrangements, such as the stacking of atoms, are of relevance in diverse disciplines. A classic problem is the determination of the optimal arrangement of spheres in three dimensions in order to achieve the highest…
Helical ribbons arise in many biological and engineered systems, often driven by anisotropic surface stress, residual strain, and geometric or elastic mismatch between layers of a laminated composite. A full mathematical analysis is…
Using continuum elasticity theory, we describe the elastic behavior of helical coils with an asymmetric double-helix structure and identify conditions, under which they become very rigid. Theoretical insight gained for macro-structures…
We investigate the geometry of hyperbolic knots and links whose diagrams have a high amount of twisting of multiple strands. We find information on volume and certain isotopy classes of geodesics for the complements of these links, based…
The distribution of string tension on the contact line between an ideal string and a massive pulley is a frequently-discussed but incompletely-posed problem that confronts students in introductory mechanics. We highlight ambiguities in the…
For a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane in general position, a non-crossing spanning tree is a spanning tree of the points where every edge is a straight-line segment between a pair of points and no two edges intersect except at a common…
An elastic rod, straight in its undeformed state, has a mass attached at one end and a variable length, due to a constraint at the other end by a frictionless sliding sleeve. The constraint is arranged with the sliding direction parallel to…
This project explores the mathematical study of knots and links in topology, focusing on differentiating between the two-component Unlink and the Hopf Link using a computational tool named LINKAGE. LINKAGE employs the linking number,…
The isoperimetric problem is one of the oldest in geometry and it consists of finding a surface of minimum area that encloses a given volume $V$. It is particularly important in physics because of its strong relation with stability, and…
In this paper we review the system made up by two blocks connected by a string over a smooth pulley with variable tension. One block lies on an horizontal surface and the another block is hanging vertically. We carry out a complete and…
The quantitative knowledge of interface anisotropy in lattice models is a major issue, both for the parametrization of continuum interface models, and for the analysis of experimental observations. In this paper, we focus on the anisotropy…
We study the relaxation of an elastic string in a two dimensional pinning landscape using Langevin dynamics simulations. The relaxation of a line, initially flat, is characterized by a growing length, $L(t)$, separating the equilibrated…
The non-linear stress-strain relation for crosslinked polymer networks is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Previously we demonstrated the importance of trapped entanglements in determining the elastic and relaxational…
A slender object undergoing an axial compression will buckle to alleviate the stress. Typically the morphology of the deformed object depends on the bending stiffness for solids, or the viscoelastic properties for liquid threads. We study a…
The rainbow chain is an inhomogenous exactly solvable local spin model that, in its ground state, displays a half-chain entanglement entropy growing linearly with the system size. Although many exact results about the rainbow chain are…
The rigidity of elastic networks depends sensitively on their internal connectivity and the nature of the interactions between constituents. Particles interacting via central forces undergo a zero-temperature rigidity-percolation transition…