Bundling architecture in elastic filaments with applied twist

TL;DR

This study explores how elastic filaments form helical bundles under twist, analyzing their packing, stability, and torque requirements through experiments and energy minimization models.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of filament packing and torque behavior in twisted elastic bundles, including the effects of disorder and radial instability.

Findings

Filaments form ordered or disordered bundles depending on filament number and twist.

Radial instability causes disorder and decreases bundle radius.

The energy model captures variations in bundle length and torque with twist.

Abstract

We investigate the formation of helical multifilament bundles and the torque required to achieve them as a function of applied twist. Hyperelastic filaments with circular cross sections are mounted parallel in a uniform circle onto end-clamps that can move along the twist axis depending on the applied axial load. With increasing twist, the filaments describe a hyperbolic hyperboloid surface before coming into contact in a circle, and then packing in a tight helical bundle in the center with increasing twist. While the bundle appears ordered for sufficiently small number of filaments, they are disordered for large enough number of filaments and applied twist. We reveal with x-ray tomography, that the packing of the filaments becomes disordered following a radial-instability which leads to a decrease in bundle radius, and migration of filaments relative to each other in the bundle. Nonetheless, the helical angle of the filaments in the bundle are found to be essentially constant, resulting in inclination angles which increase with distance from axis of rotation. We develop energy minimization analysis to capture the observed variations in bundle length and torque as a function of number of filaments considering the neo-Hookean nature of the filaments. We show that the bundle geometry and the applied load can be used to describe the non-linear torque profile measured as a function of twist angle.