Related papers: Exploiting Instabilities to Enable Large Shape Tra…
This paper describes a method for steering deformable linear objects using two robot hands in environments populated by sparsely spaced obstacles. The approach involves manipulating an elastic inextensible rod by varying the gripping…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft phase-changing solids that exhibit large reversible contractions upon heating, Goldstone-like soft modes and resultant microstructural instabilities. We heat a planar LCE slab to isotropic, clamp…
For a wide class of linear Hamiltonian operators we develop a general criterion that characterizes the unstable eigenvalues as the zeros of a holomorphic function given by the determinant of a finite-dimensional matrix. We apply the latter…
Manipulating the shape of nanoscale objects in a controllable fashion is at the heart of designing materials that act as building blocks for self-assembly or serve as targeted drug delivery carriers. Inducing shape deformations by…
Electrowetting is a commonly used tool to manipulate sessile drops on hydrophobic surfaces. By applying an external voltage over a liquid and a dielectric-coated surface, one achieves a reduction of the macroscopic contact angles for…
We present a methodology to simulate the mechanics of knots in elastic rods using geometrically nonlinear, full three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis. We focus on the mechanical behavior of knots in tight configurations, for which…
Owing to its substantial implications for black hole spectroscopy, spectral instability has attracted considerable attention in the literature. While the emergence of such instability is attributed to the non-Hermitian nature of the…
Spontaneous material shape changes, such as swelling, growth or thermal expansion, can be used to trigger dramatic elastic instabilities in thin shells. These instabilities originate in geometric incompatibility between the preferred…
Collisionless shocks are known to induce turbulence via upstream ion reflection within the precursor region. This study elucidates the properties of electrostatic and electromagnetic instabilities, exploring their role over the…
The diffraction of fast atoms at crystal surfaces is ideal for a detailed investigation of the surface electronic density. However, instead of sharp diffraction spots, most experiments show elongated streaks characteristic of inelastic…
Mechanical and elastic properties of materials are among the most fundamental quantities for many engineering and industrial applications. Here, we present a formulation that is efficient and accurate for calculating the elastic and bending…
Electrohydrodynamic instabilities of fluid-fluid interfaces can be exploited in various microfluidic applications in order to enhance mixing, replicate well-controlled patterns or generate drops of a particular size. In this work, we study…
Soft robots have garnered significant attention due to their promising applications across various domains. A hallmark of these systems is their bilayer structure, where strain mismatch caused by differential expansion between layers…
We present herein the results of a linear gyrokinetic analysis of electromagnetic microinstabilites in the conceptual high-$\beta$, reactor-scale, tight-aspect-ratio tokamak STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production,…
As we enter the age of designer matter - where objects can morph and change shape on command - what tools do we need to create shape-shifting structures? At the heart of an elastic deformation is the combination of dilation and distortion,…
Electromagnetic (EM) instabilities and turbulence driven by the electron-temperature gradient are considered in a local slab model of a tokamak-like plasma. The model describes perturbations at scales both larger and smaller than the…
Cutting-edge smart materials are transforming the domains of soft robotics, actuators, and sensors by harnessing diverse non-mechanical stimuli, such as electric and magnetic fields. Accurately modelling their physical behaviour…
The application of pure torsion to a long and thin cylindrical rod is known to provoke a twisting instability, evolving from an initial kink to a knot. In the torsional parallel-plate rheometry of stubby cylinders, the geometrical…
The Tayler instability (TI) is a non-axisymmetric linear instability of an axisymmetric toroidal magnetic field in magneto-hydrostatic equilibrium (MHSE). Spruit (1999, 2002) has proposed that in a differentially rotating radiative region…
In this study, a new position control scheme for the tendon-sheath mechanism (TSM) which is used in flexible medical devices is presented. TSM is widely used in dexterous robotic applications because it can flexibly work in limited space,…