Bi-stability resistant to fluctuations

Abstract

We study a simple micro-mechanical device that does not lose its snap-through behavior in an environment dominated by fluctuations. The main idea is to have several degrees of freedom that can cooperatively resist the de-synchronizing effect of random perturbations. As an inspiration we use the power stroke machinery of skeletal muscles, which ensures at sub-micron scales and finite temperatures a swift recovery of an abruptly applied slack. In addition to hypersensitive response at finite temperatures, our prototypical Brownian snap spring also exhibits criticality at special values of parameters which is another potentially interesting property for micro-scale engineering applications.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Physics of muscle contraction
• Snare machinery is optimized for ultrafast fusion
• Thermal control of nucleation and propagation transition stresses in discrete lattices with non-local interactions and non-convex energy
• Mean field fracture in disordered solids: statistics of fluctuations
• Functionality of disorder in muscle mechanics
• Passive viscoelastic response of striated muscles