Elastocapillary Snapping: Capillarity Induces Snap-Through Instabilities in Small Elastic Beams

Abstract

We report on the capillary-induced snapping of elastic beams. We show that a millimeter-sized water drop gently deposited on a thin buckled polymer strip may trigger an elastocapillary snap-through instability. We investigate experimentally and theoretically the statics and dynamics of this phenomenon and we further demonstrate that snapping can act against gravity, or be induced by soap bubbles on centimeter-sized thin metal strips. We argue that this phenomenon is suitable to miniaturization and design a condensation-induced spin-off version of the experiment involving an hydrophilic strip placed in a steam flow.

References in corpus (3)

• Dynamics of Snapping Beams and Jumping Poppers
• The bending of an elastic beam by a liquid drop: A variational approach
• Elasto-capillary meniscus: Pulling out a soft strip sticking to a liquid surface

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