Filament instability under constant loads

MONASTRA A.; CARUSELA M.F.; D'ANGELO V.; BRUNO L.

Journal of Physics: Conference Series

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: London; Año: 2018 vol. 1012

1742-6596

Buckling of semi-flexible filaments appears in different systems and scales. Some examples are: fibers in geophysical applications,  microtubules in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells  and deformation of polymers freely suspended in a flow.In these examples, instabilities arise when a system´s parameter exceeds a critical value, being the Euler force the most known. However, the complete time evolution and wavelength of buckling processes are not fully understood.In this work we solve analytically the time evolution of a filament under a constant compressive force in the small amplitude approximation. This gives an insight into the variable force scenario in terms of {it hydroeigenmodes}. The evolution is highly sensitive to the initial configuration and to the magnitude of the compressive load.