# Measuring geometric frustration in twisted inextensible filament bundles

## TL;DR

This study combines experiments and novel mapping techniques to analyze how twisting affects the packing and geometric frustration in filament bundles, revealing the relationship between twist, curvature, and defect formation.

## Contribution

It introduces a new mapping of filament packing to a non-Euclidean surface to quantify geometric frustration in twisted bundles.

## Key findings

- Filaments develop helical rotation under boundary twist.
- Packing maps to a surface with curvature proportional to twist.
- Defects form at the exterior of highly twisted bundles.

## Abstract

We investigate with experiments and novel mapping the structure of a hexagonally ordered filament bundle that is held near its ends and progressively twisted around its central axis. The filaments are free to slide relative to each other and are further held under tension-free boundary conditions. Measuring the bundle packing with micro x-ray imaging, we find that the filaments develop the helical rotation $\Omega$ imposed at the boundaries. We then show that the observed structure is consistent with a mapping of the filament positions to disks packed on a dual non-Euclidean surface with a Gaussian curvature which increases with twist. We further demonstrate that the mean inter-filament distance is minimal on the surface which can be approximated by a hemisphere with an effective curvature $K_{eff} = 3\Omega^2$. Examining the packing on the dual surface, we analyze the geometric frustration of packing in twisted bundles and find the core to remain relatively hexagonally ordered with inter-filament strains growing from the bundle center, driving the formation of defects at the exterior of highly twisted bundles.