Related papers: Self-supporting Structure of Bird Nests
The growth of multicomponent structures in simulations and experiments often results in kinetically trapped, nonequilibrium objects. In such cases we have no general theoretical framework for predicting the outcome of the growth process.…
Through experiments, we idealise a plant leaf as a flexible, thin, rectangular plate clamped at the midpoint and positioned perpendicular to an airflow. Flexibility of the structure is considered as an advantage at moderate flow speed…
We present experimental results about the stability of arches against external vibrations. Two dimensional strings of mutually stabilizing grains are geometrically analyzed and subsequently submitted to a periodic forcing at fixed frequency…
We investigate the occupancy statistics of birds on a wire and on higher-dimensional substrates. In one dimension, birds land one by one on a wire and rest where they land. Whenever a newly arriving bird lands within a fixed distance of…
It is well known that viable architectural structures can be identified by locating the critical points of the gravitational potential energy congruent with some fixed surface metric. This is because, if the walls are thin, the lowest…
Motivated by recent simulations and by experiments on aggregation of gliding bacteria, we study a model of the collective dynamics of self-propelled hard rods on a substrate in two dimensions. The rods have finite size, interact via…
Biological growth is often driven by mechanical cues, such as changes in external pressure or tensile loading. Moreover, it is well known that many living tissues actively maintain a preferred level of mechanical internal stress, called the…
We investigate the quasi-static growth of elastic fibers in the presence of dry or viscous friction. An unusual form of destabilization beyond a critical length is described. In order to characterize this phenomenon, a new definition of…
Jumping take-off in birds is an explosive behaviour with the goal of providing a rapid transition from ground to airborne locomotion. An effective jump is predicated on the need to maintain dynamic stability through the acceleration phase.…
Systems of randomly packed, macroscopic elements, from jammed spherical grains to tangled long filaments, represent a broad class of disordered meta-materials with a wide range of applications and manifestations in nature. A `bird nest'…
Unstable systems of fluidized grains in a very-narrow vertical tube can auto-defluidize after some time, the settling particles forming either a glass- or crystal-like structure. We carried out experiments using different polymer spheres,…
Steady structures originating from dynamic self-assembly have begun to show their advantages in new generation materials, and pose challenges to equilibrium self-assembly. In view of the important role of confinement in self-assembly, here,…
We describe a series of experiments involving the creation of cylindrical packings of star-shaped particles, and an exploration of the stability of these packings. The stars cover a broad range of arm sizes and frictional properties. We…
The existence of instabilities, for example in the form of adversarial examples, has given rise to a highly active area of research concerning itself with understanding and enhancing the stability of neural networks. We focus on a popular…
The atomic structure, mechanical and thermodynamic stability of vacancy clusters in Cu are studied by atomistic simulations. The most stable atomic configuration of small vacancy clusters is determined. The mechanical stability of the…
Owing to their inherently interpretable structure, decision trees are commonly used in applications where interpretability is essential. Recent work has focused on improving various aspects of decision trees, including their predictive…
Given a power grid and a transmission (coupling) strength, basin stability is a measure of synchronization stability for individual nodes. Earlier studies have focused on the basin stability's dependence of the position of the nodes in the…
Stability of flapping flight, a natural requirement for flying insects, is one of the major challenges for designing micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). To better understand how a flying insect could stabilize itself during hover, we have…
Designing for rotational stability can dramatically affect the geometry of a space station. If improperly designed, the rotating station could end up catastrophically tumbling end-over-end. Active stabilization can address this problem;…
Planning accurate manipulation for deformable objects requires prediction of their state. The prediction is often complicated by a loss of stability that may result in collapse of the deformable object. In this work, stability of a fabric…