Nicholas Brubaker (California State University, Fullerton)
Deforming an elastic plate around a liquid drop is an energetically efficient way to build microscale structures. However, accessing the full design space of the structure requires being able to completely wrap the plate around the drop. Full wrapping is predicated on inducing a bending instability that occurs when the drop’s surface tension dominates the plate’s rigidity. We elucidate this bifurcation in some simplified models and discuss its ubiquity in many other elasto-capillary systems.
Contact : W. Ahmed