Related papers: The shape of the edge of a leaf
Differential growth processes play a prominent role in shaping leaves and biological tissues. Using both analytical and numerical calculations, we consider the shapes of closed, elastic strips which have been subjected to an inhomogeneous…
We consider a disk-shaped thin elastic sheet bonded to a compliant sphere. (Our sheet can slip along the sphere; the bonding controls only its normal displacement.) If the bonding is stiff (but not too stiff), the geometry of the sphere…
Thin elastic sheets bend easily, leading to mechanical instabilities such as wrinkling. Here, we investigate wrinkles at edges of bi-strips, which consist of two thin sheets, one that swells and one that does not, joined side-by-side. It is…
Predicting the large-amplitude deformations of thin elastic sheets is difficult due to the complications of self-contact, geometric nonlinearities, and a multitude of low-lying energy states. We study a simple two-dimensional setting where…
When twisting a strip of paper or acetate under high longitudinal tension, one observes, at some critical load, a buckling of the strip into a regular triangular pattern. Very similar triangular facets have recently been observed in…
Numerical simulations of thin sheets undergoing large deformations are computationally challenging. Depending on the scenario, they may spontaneously buckle, wrinkle, fold, or crumple. Nature's thin tissues often experience significant…
We solve several problems that involve imposing metrics on surfaces. The problem of a strip with a linear metric gradient is formulated in terms of a Lagrangean similar to those used for spin systems. We are able to show that the low energy…
A ubiquitous motif in nature is the self-similar hierarchical buckling of a thin lamina near its margins. This is seen in leaves, flowers, fungi, corals, and marine invertebrates. We investigate this morphology from the perspective of…
Folding a sheet of paper along a curve can lead to structures seen in decorative art and utilitarian packing boxes. Here we present a theory for the simplest such structure: an annular circular strip that is folded along a central circular…
We consider the axial compression of a thin sheet wrapped around a rigid cylindrical substrate. In contrast to the wrinkling-to-fold transitions exhibited in similar systems, we find that the sheet always buckles into a single symmetric…
Thin sheets that are forced at their boundaries develop a variety of shapes aimed at minimising elastic energy by curving spontaneously in ways that break the symmetry of the sheet and the forcing. Characterising such buckling generally…
The balance between stretching and bending deformations characterizes shape transitions of thin elastic sheets. While stretching dominates the mechanical response in tension, bending dominates in compression after an abrupt buckling…
A thin circular elastic sheet floating on a drop-like liquid substrate is deformed due to incompatibility between the curved substrate and the planar sheet. We adopt a variational viewpoint by minimizing the non-convex membrane energy…
The three-dimensional shapes of thin lamina such as leaves, flowers, feathers, wings etc, are driven by the differential strain induced by the relative growth. The growth takes place through variations in the Riemannian metric, given on the…
A variational framework is introduced to describe how a surface bends when it is subject to local constraints on its geometry. This framework is applied to describe the patterns of a folded sheet of paper. The unstretchability of paper…
When a flat elastic strip is compressed along its axis, it is bent in one of two possible directions via spontaneous symmetry breaking and forms a cylindrical arc, a phenomenon well known as Euler buckling. When this cylindrical section is…
A dielectric elastomer whose edges are held fixed will buckle, given sufficient applied voltage, resulting in a nontrivial out-of-plane deformation. We study this situation numerically using a nonlinear elastic model which decouples two of…
The innumerable shapes of plant leaves present a challenge to the explanatory power of biophysical theory. A model is needed that can produce these shapes with a small set of parameters. This paper presents a simple model of leaf shape…
This paper investigates the motion of falling leaves through modeling using papers and the corresponding data collected from more than four thousands experiments. Two series of experiments were designed in order to study the relationship…
We formulate a nonlinear continuum model of a graphene sheet supported by a flat rigid substrate. The sheet is parallel to the substrate and loaded on a pair of opposite edges. A typical cross-section of the sheet is modeled as an elastica.…