@article{6220b289064d419eacb3e54a3b59c882,
title = "Forward and inverse problems in the mechanics of soft filaments",
abstract = "Soft slender structures are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems, in active and passive settings and across scales, from polymers and flagella, to snakes and space tethers. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of a simple and practical numerical implementation based on the Cosserat rod model to simulate the dynamics of filaments that can bend, twist, stretch and shear while interacting with complex environments via muscular activity, surface contact, friction and hydrodynamics. We validate our simulations by solving a number of forward problems involving the mechanics of passive filaments and comparing them with known analytical results, and extend them to study instabilities in stretched and twisted filaments that form solenoidal and plectonemic structures. We then study active filaments such as snakes and other slender organisms by solving inverse problems to identify optimal gaits for limbless locomotion on solid surfaces and in bulk liquids.",
keywords = "Computational mechanics, Cosserat theory, Soft filaments",
author = "M. Gazzola and Dudte, \{L. H.\} and McCormick, \{A. G.\} and L. Mahadevan",
note = "We thank the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Blue Waters project (OCI-0725070, ACI-1238993), a joint effort of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its National Center for Supercomputing Applications, for partial support (M.G.), and the Harvard MRSEC grant NSF DMR 14-20570, Harvard Biomatter grant NSF DMR 33985 and ARO W911NF-15-1-016 for additional support (L.M.). Dataaccessibility. Oursoftwareimplementingthestudycasespresentedinthemanuscriptandintheappendixispublicly available at https://github.com/mattialab/elastica.git. Authors{\textquoteright} contributions. M.G. and L.M. designed the study. M.G. and A.G.M. implemented the software. M.G. and L.H.D. carried out the analysis of the results. M.G., L.H.D. and L.M. wrote the manuscript. Competing interests. The authors declare no competing interests. Funding. We thank the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Blue Waters project (OCI-0725070, ACI-1238993), a joint effort of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its National Center for Supercomputing Applications, for partial support (M.G.), and the Harvard MRSEC grant NSF DMR 14-20570, Harvard Biomatter grant NSF DMR 33985 and ARO W911NF-15-1-016 for additional support (L.M.). Acknowledgements. We thank Nicholas Charles for a careful reading of and comments on the paper.",
year = "2018",
month = jun,
day = "13",
doi = "10.1098/rsos.171628",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "5",
journal = "Royal Society Open Science",
issn = "2054-5703",
publisher = "The Royal Society",
number = "6",
}