Related papers: The elastica sling
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…
Configurational, or Eshelby-like, forces are shown to strongly influence the nonlinear dynamics of an elastic rod constrained with a frictionless sliding sleeve at one end and with an attached mass at the other end. The configurational…
We investigate the stability and geometrically non-linear dynamics of slender rods made of a linear isotropic poroelastic material. Dimensional reduction leads to the evolution equation for the shape of the poroelastica where, in addition…
It is shown that a compound elastic structure, which displays a dynamic instability, may be designed as the union (or 'fusion') of two structures which are stable when separately analyzed. The compound elastic structure has two degrees of…
A highly deformable rod, modelled as the extensible elastica, is connected to a movable clamp at one end and to a pin sliding along a frictionless curved profile at the other. Bifurcation analysis shows that axial compliance provides a…
The design of compliant mechanisms is crucial in several technologies and relies on the availability of solutions for nonlinear structural problems. One of these solutions is given and experimentally validated in the present article for a…
When an inextensible elastic rod is 'injected' through a sliding sleeve against a fixed constraint, configurational forces are developed, deeply influencing the mechanical response. This effect, which is a consequence of the change in…
Snapping mechanisms are investigated for an elastic strip with ends imposed to move and rotate in time. Attacking the problem analytically via Euler's elastica and the second variation of the total potential energy, the number of stable…
Many physical systems can be modelled as parameter-dependent variational problems. In numerous cases, multiple equilibria co-exist, requiring the evaluation of their stability, and the monitoring of transitions between them. Generally, the…
One cannot pull an open, curved string along itself. This fact is clearly reflected in the unwrapping motion of a string or chain as it is dragged around an object, and implies strong consequences for slender structures in passive…
Rotating the clamped ends of a buckled elastica induces a snap-through instability. Predicting the limit point and determining the equilibria at the start and end of the snap are routine computations in the quasi-static setting. The…
The manipulation of flexible objects such as cables, wires and fresh food items by robot hands forms a special challenge in robot grasp mechanics. This paper considers the steering of flexible linear objects in planar environments by two…
The concept of 'deformable arm scale' (completely different from a traditional rigid arm balance) is theoretically introduced and experimentally validated. The idea is not intuitive, but is the result of nonlinear equilibrium kinematics of…
One of the most challenging and basic problems in elastic rod dynamics is a description of rods in contact that prevents any unphysical self-intersections. Most previous works addressed this issue through the introduction of short-range…
In this paper we consider a mathematical model which describes the equilibrium of two elastic rods attached to a nonlinear spring. We derive the variational formulation of the model which is in the form of an elliptic quasivariational…
A slender thread of elastic hydrogel is susceptible to a surface instability that is reminiscent of the classical Rayleigh-Plateau instability of liquid jets. The final, highly nonlinear states that are observed in experiments arise from a…
Slender elastic objects such as a column tend to buckle under loads. While static buckling is well understood as a bifurcation problem, the evolution of shapes during dynamic buckling is much harder to study. Elastic rings under normal…
The equations of a planar elastica under pressure can be rewritten in a useful form by parametrising the variables in terms of the local orientation angle, $\theta$, instead of the arc length. This ``$\theta$-formulation'' lends itself to a…
A theoretical description of the weakly nonlinear and mode-dependent dynamics of a nanoscale beam that is under intrinsic tension is developed. A full analysis of the dynamic range of the beam over a wide range of conditions is presented.…
We consider a one dimensional elastic string as a set of massless beads interacting through springs characterized by anisotropic elastic constants. The string, driven by an external force, moves in a medium with quenched disorder. We…