The heavy windlass: Buckling and coiling of an elastic rod inside a liquid drop in the presence of gravity

Abstract

A liquid drop sitting on an elastic rod may act as a winch, or windlass, and pull the rod inside itself and coil it. This windlass effect has been shown to be generated by surface tension forces and to work best for small systems. Here we study the case where the drop is large enough so that its weight interferes with surface tension and modifies the windlass mechanics.

Growth of a flexible fibre in a deformable ring

“…In this limit we expect Z -0, so that, by using asymptotic behaviour of elliptic integrals and hypergeometric functions, eqn (10) and (12), up to o(Z), reduce to:…”

“…2 Consequently, studies on the mechanics, growth, and morphology of confined bodies are multiplying in various fields of science. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Furthermore, the analysis of growth-induced instabilities represents an ideal playground to explore many systems of interest in engineering, biological, and medical applications. 17,18 These include the buckling of cellular microtubules which are confined by either external microtubule networks during vesicle growth, 19 or the surrounding cytoplasm.…”