Slip or (k)not: Geometry and mechanical performance of physical knots
- Date
- May 7 (Thu) at 17:00 - 17:45, 2020 (JST)
- Speaker
-
- Tomohiko Sano (PD, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
- Venue
- via Zoom
- Language
- English
Knots can impart unique mechanical function to filamentary structures, with examples ranging across length scales, including DNA, polymer-chains, shoelaces, climbing ropes, tennis racket, and surgical sutures. Even though knot theory has a long history of studies in the realm of mathematics, mechanics-based studies of physical knots are much rarer. The fundamental challenge in the understanding of their mechanics under a wide range of loading conditions stems from the fact that their topology, geometry, elasticity, and friction are all tangled ingredients. In this talk, combining experiments, simulations and theory, we present the recent progress on the predictive framework for the knot performance.