Solid Drops: Large Capillary Deformations of Immersed Elastic Rods

Serge Mora (1, 2) , Corrado Maurini (3, 4) , Ty Phou (5) , Jean-Marc Fromental (5) , Basile Audoly (6, 3) , Yves Pomeau (7)

1 LMGC - Laboratoire de Mécanique et Génie Civil
2 PMMG - Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Granulaires
3 DALEMBERT - Institut Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
4 IJLRDA-MISES - Mécanique et Ingénierie des Solides Et des Structures
5 L2C - Laboratoire Charles Coulomb
6 LMS - Laboratoire de mécanique des solides
7 Department of Mathematics [University of Arizona]

Under the effect of surface tension a blob of liquid adopts a spherical shape when immersed in another fluid. We demonstrate experimentally that soft, centimeter-size elastic solids can exhibit a similar behavior: when immersed into a liquid, a gel having a low elastic modulus undergoes large, reversible deformations. We analyze three fundamental types of deformations of a slender elastic solid driven by surface stress, depending on the shape of its cross-section: a circular elastic cylinder shortens in the longitudinal direction and stretches transversally; the sharp edges of a square based prism get rounded off as its cross-sections tend to become circular; a slender, triangular based prism bends. These experimental results are compared to analysis and non-linear simulations of neo-Hookean solids deformed by surface tension, and are found to be in good agreement with each other.

Domaines: Mécanique des solides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des solides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des structures [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des structures [physics.class-ph]; Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]

Serge Mora, Corrado Maurini, Ty Phou, Jean-Marc Fromental, Basile Audoly, et al.. Solid Drops: Large Capillary Deformations of Immersed Elastic Rods. Physical Review Letters, 2013, 111 (11), ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.114301⟩. ⟨hal-00842852v2⟩