Related papers: (Dis)continuous buckling transition in elastic she…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
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,…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
From soda cans to space rockets, thin-walled cylindrical shells are abundant, offering exceptional load carrying capacity at relatively low weight. However, the actual load at which any shell buckles and collapses is very sensitive to…
We study the periodic buckling patterns that emerge when elastic shells are subjected to geometric confinement. Residual swelling provides access to range of shapes (saddles, rolled sheets, cylinders, and spherical sections) which vary in…
A buckled sheet offers a reservoir of material that can be unfurled at a later time. For sufficiently thin yet stiff materials, this geometric process has a striking mechanical feature: when the slack runs out, the material locks to further…
This work reveals that the dynamic response of a spherical cap bubble in contact with a rigid wall depends on the effective contact angle at the instant prior to collapse. This parameter allows us to discriminate between two regimes in…
Random packings of stiff rods are self-supporting mechanical structures stabilized by long range interactions induced by contacts. To understand the geometrical and topological complexity of the packings, we first deploy X-ray computerized…
Designing smart devices with tunable shapes has important applications in industrial manufacture. In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear deformation and the morphological transitions between buckling, necking, and snap-through…
We explore a two-body system with superexponential interactions that serves as a fundamental building block for a route to complexity. While being of striking simplicity this highly nonlinear interaction yields a plethora of intriguing…
Elastohydrodynamic lubrication, or simply soft lubrication, refers to the motion of deformable objects near a boundary lubricated by a fluid, and is one of the key physical mechanisms to minimise friction and wear in natural and engineered…
Depending on its geometry, a spherical shell may exist in one of two stable states without the application of any external force: there are two `self-equilibrated' states, one natural and the other inside out (or `everted'). Though this is…
The underwater launch of high-speed vehicles involves complex bubble-structure interactions, which are not currently well understood. In this study, two small-scale experiments are carried out involving transient bubble-cylinder…
The accurate mathematical modeling of droplet impact dynamics on micro-structured surfaces is fundamental to understanding and predicting complex fluid behaviors relevant to a wide range of engineering and scientific applications. In…
Snakes can traverse almost all types of environments by bending their elongate bodies in 3-D to interact with the terrain. Similarly, a snake robot is a promising platform to perform critical tasks in various environments. Understanding how…
For an elastic system that is non-conservative but autonomous, subjected for example to time-independent loading by a steadily flowing fluid (air or water), a dangerous bifurcation, such as a sub-critical bifurcation, or a cyclic fold, will…
We introduce a high-throughput platform that enables simultaneous, parallel testing of six bistable beams via programmable motion of a rotating disk. By prescribing harmonic angular dynamics, the platform explores the phase space of angular…
We consider the dynamic snapping instability of elastic beams and shells. Using the Kirchhoff rod and F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n plate equations, we study the stability, deformation modes, and snap-through dynamics of an elastic arch with…
Inspired by spiking neural feedback, we propose a spiking controller for efficient locomotion in a soft robotic crawler. Its bistability, akin to neural fast positive feedback, combined with a sensorimotor slow negative feedback loop,…