Sébastien Neukirch
Institut Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Sorbonne Université, Campus Pierre et Marie Curie
Paris, Francetel: +33 1 44 27 72 61
e-mail: sebastien.neukirch (-atat-) upmc.fr
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Elastocapillary snapping: Capillarity induces snap-through instabilities in small elastic beams
A. Fargette, S. Neukirch, and A. Antkowiak
Phys. Rev. Lett., vol 112 (2014) 137802 :
Abstract : We report on the capillary-induced snapping of elastic beams. We show that a millimeter-sized water drop gently deposited on a thin buckled polymer strip may trigger an elastocapillary snap-through instability. We investigate experimentally and theoretically the statics and dynamics of this phenomenon and we further demonstrate that snapping can act against gravity, or be induced by soap bubbles on centimeter-sized thin metal strips. We argue that this phenomenon is suitable to miniaturization and design a condensation-induced spin-off version of the experiment involving an hydrophilic strip placed in a steam flow.
PACS numbers : 61.41.+e, 46.32.+x, 47.55.D−, 68.03.Cd
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.137802
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