Tendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.

A straight elastic rod with intrinsic curvature under varying tension can undergo an instability and bifurcate to a filament made out of two helices with opposite handedness. This inversion of handedness, known as perversion, appears in a wide range of biological and physical systems and is investig...

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Main Authors: McMillen, T, Goriely, A
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2002
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author McMillen, T
Goriely, A
author_facet McMillen, T
Goriely, A
author_sort McMillen, T
collection OXFORD
description A straight elastic rod with intrinsic curvature under varying tension can undergo an instability and bifurcate to a filament made out of two helices with opposite handedness. This inversion of handedness, known as perversion, appears in a wide range of biological and physical systems and is investigated here within the framework of thin elastic rods described by the static Kirchhoff equations. In this context, a perversion is represented by a heteroclinic orbit joining asymptotically two fixed points representing helices with opposite torsion. A center manifold reduction and a normal form transformation for a triple zero eigenvalue reduce the dynamics to a third-order reversible dynamical system. The analysis of this reduced system reveals that the heteroclinic connection representing the physical solution results from the collapse of pairs of symmetric homoclinic orbits. Results of the normal form calculation are compared with numerical solutions obtained by continuation methods. The possibility of self-contact and the elastic characteristics of the perverted rod are also studied.
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spelling oxford-uuid:1620d506-25c7-45a6-a511-f6bfb9fd01772022-03-26T10:29:24ZTendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:1620d506-25c7-45a6-a511-f6bfb9fd0177EnglishSymplectic Elements at Oxford2002McMillen, TGoriely, AA straight elastic rod with intrinsic curvature under varying tension can undergo an instability and bifurcate to a filament made out of two helices with opposite handedness. This inversion of handedness, known as perversion, appears in a wide range of biological and physical systems and is investigated here within the framework of thin elastic rods described by the static Kirchhoff equations. In this context, a perversion is represented by a heteroclinic orbit joining asymptotically two fixed points representing helices with opposite torsion. A center manifold reduction and a normal form transformation for a triple zero eigenvalue reduce the dynamics to a third-order reversible dynamical system. The analysis of this reduced system reveals that the heteroclinic connection representing the physical solution results from the collapse of pairs of symmetric homoclinic orbits. Results of the normal form calculation are compared with numerical solutions obtained by continuation methods. The possibility of self-contact and the elastic characteristics of the perverted rod are also studied.
spellingShingle McMillen, T
Goriely, A
Tendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.
title Tendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.
title_full Tendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.
title_fullStr Tendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.
title_full_unstemmed Tendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.
title_short Tendril Perversion in Intrinsically Curved Rods.
title_sort tendril perversion in intrinsically curved rods
work_keys_str_mv AT mcmillent tendrilperversioninintrinsicallycurvedrods
AT gorielya tendrilperversioninintrinsicallycurvedrods